


Heartsigh

by utsu



Series: Between the Trees [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-05 16:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11582010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsu/pseuds/utsu
Summary: Prompt: Unexpectedly in love. (SasuHina)





	1. Chapter 1

(Like the tide; push, and then pull.)

 

✧

 

Mornings in Konoha were each of them a spectacle, bright and blazing. The sun finely caressed the crests of the mountains, a lover’s morning kiss, filled entirely with heat.

Hinata blinked her eyes open and pointedly ignored the crick in her back, just there above her right hip. She could feel grains of stone pricking her palms as she pushed herself up, rising none too steadily before clutching the still-healing wound over her ribs. She rested her shoulder against the rocks, waning, lightheaded. An inn would’ve been much preferred, as far as halfway houses go, but she’d been weak and bleeding and so damned _tired_ ; this small cutout cave was her only option.

She’d dreamt of home, hot and bright and overcast with every shade of welcoming morning. Now, she lifted her fingers in front of her tilting vision and watched them shake. There was a coolness, here, amid nothing but rock and stone; It leeched into her body, her bones, and she thought of the color blue.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, this.

Hinata pressed her eyes closed for a moment, pushing past the pain in her temples until her periorbital veins dilated. She opened her eyes and she could see it all; the flickering of a bird’s wings over the cave; the quiet ambush of ants over the carcass of some long-abandoned prey; the blood splashed over the dirt path several kilometers west.

Noticeably absent, however, were the bodies the blood belonged to. Hinata could feel it under her nails, a wasted thought, but their absence didn’t surprise her. She extended her vision as far as she could, unimaginably far, and after a tense moment of suspicion she sagged with relief against the rocks. _No one_ , she thought. _I’m alone_.

The blood rushing through her veins calmed, her vision and focus narrowing back to that subdued blur at the edges. She knelt and considered healing the laceration on her ribs, which she could feel had bled through her hastily applied field dressing, but decided against it. Her chakra stores were nearly depleted, and it was a wonder she’d woken as early as she had.

Having used too much time already—though for proper purposes, nonetheless—Hinata traced her fingers through the gritty earth before forming the appropriate seals. She pulled a scroll from the pouch on her leg and unfurled it with a flick of her wrist, a single practiced motion. Except that something in her wrist suddenly garnered her attention with a pulse of pain, causing her to flinch but not falter. _Ugh_ , she thought, frustrations curling her expression into something creased with lines. She’d thought her condition better than this.

The scroll unfurled and responded to her next set of seals, a message rapidly scrawled in code, and sealed itself in a single quiet _fwip_. She balanced it in the earth, surrounded by her hand-drawn seals, and used what precious chakra she had left to transport it directly to the Nanadaime.

“There,” she whispered with a shaky smile, sitting back on her heels and wiping the fine sheen of sweat over her forehead away with a heavy forearm. She allowed herself a moment of respite, a single flicker of a break from what she would have to do next before her thoughts returned to the content of the message and her smile slid away, stoicism replacing it. It wasn’t a complete message, and it wasn’t good news. It was too important to transport with a scroll, which could easily be intercepted. It was also a major complication, and Naruto wasn’t going to like what it meant for his fast-tracked plans for peace between the villages.

Thinking of Naruto still brought warmth to her heart, but it had been a long time since she had felt anything more than friendly admiration for their newest Hokage. He had never responded to her confession, and Hinata still wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t know what to say, or didn’t understand the true meaning of what her confession had meant.

What it should have changed, between them.

Hinata shook thoughts of the past off her with a little shake of her head, and stood to her full height. She made quick work of her temporary sleeping area, returning it back to an appearance of untouched wild that had never felt human change. She hefted her field pack onto her back and paused at the lip of the cave, closing her eyes to listen to her surroundings, confident in her senses.

She knew to listen for the silence of a waiting predator, rather than the rustling of a moving creature. Shinobi had a practiced quiet to their steps that Hinata was attuned to, having grown up beside Kiba and learned from him and Akamaru about enhanced senses—and how to utilize them.

She could count the number of shinobi that could sneak up on her on one hand. Those that made the cut were familiar to her in name only; stand outs. She felt chills race down her arms at the thought of their practiced silence, the utter and absolute lack of presence they assumed when necessary. Outliers.

She opened her eyes and was confident, then, that she was the only shinobi in the area.

Shinobi had a practiced quiet to their steps, a single scuff here, a subtle pressure there. She would have heard it.

She should have—would _usually_ have prepared for the worst, but she was so damned tired, her chakra scraping the dregs of her potential, and maybe that’s why she missed it. Maybe she was distracted by her own exhaustion, so far from home, tired enough to be kicking up the dust of the past in her thoughts. She was waning, shaking, bleeding, and it just did not occur to her to look closer, look harder, find in the fluctuation of wildlife around her the one isolated statue of frigid absence; truly—

She had not expected an outlier.

 

✧

 

Hinata had been jogging back towards Konoha with a determined but lilting pace for hours, with only a few breaks in-between. It was not an unfamiliar or unfortunate distance, from the borders of Mist, but Hinata had several unattended wounds and aches that arose with the jarring of each step. Most concerning of all, however, was the way that her vision continued to blur at the edges.

She’d been ambushed by a troupe of Mist Jounin after attaining the information she’d inadvertently stumbled upon during her reconnaissance mission, and one of them had carried a club. Hinata had made quick work of the first two men, had taken a few slices from a vicious sharp-toothed woman with fin-like blades before disarming and disqualifying her. The lithe man with the club larger than his own body had snuck up on her and clocked her right on the back of the head, her reflexes getting her mostly out of the way, but not enough to completely miss the blow. She could feel the raised skin there, still aching as she slowed to a walk.

How the troupe had discovered her presence, completely veiled and hidden in the underbrush several kilometers away from their base camp, she had no idea—but it reeked of duplicity. With the information she’d captured still whirling around in her mind, she didn’t have to wonder why.

Hinata stumbled, and it was a testament to how exhausted she was that instead of catching herself, she instead fell to her knee. A stone jutted into her skin but not deep enough to worry her, even as she hissed. Her vision swam.

She hadn’t considered poison, until just that moment. She had a general pack of labelled antidotes and herbs in her pouch, her medical training always present, but it suddenly seemed so far away. She brought her right hand up in front of her again and watched it swim before she clenched it into a fist and forced herself back to standing position. She swayed slightly and managed to find her pouch, but when she pulled her medipack out the labels swam, too.

“Damn it,” she cursed lowly, trying to steady her vision. Calling the Byakugan was unthinkable at this stage of exhaustion, and she wasn’t about to make herself faint on enemy land with no chance of aid or concealment. She bit her lip hard enough to make it bleed, and focused on the pain there. Her vision cleared with the sudden change in focus—pain, as always, the champion of attention—and she pulled the vial for a broad-spectrum Mist antidote from her pack. It wasn’t easy but it was possible, after that, to prepare the syringe and inject it into the muscle of her thigh.

She waited a moment to feel the effects, which she soon realized were not forthcoming, and felt the first pinch of tears begin to form at the exact moment that she realized something all the more critically important.

The _stillness_.

The birds were silent, and had there not been a forthcoming breeze, Hinata thought even the trees themselves would’ve been loath to move. The creatures of the underbrush were decidedly absent from view, the forests normally crawling carpet suddenly so spine-tinglingly motionless. Hinata could hear nothing but the sound of her own racing heartbeat.

She froze, every inch of her tensed in sudden realization that she had become prey. _I can do this_ , she thought, trying to keep herself focused on positives rather than the truth of her situation: that she was easy pickings in the middle of enemy land, poisoned and hunted.

She tried to pinpoint where it was coming from, but it was like trying to find the lowest frequency of light in a kaleidoscope of color, with blurred eyes and muddied senses. There was something about the air, though, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Her mind tried to come up with an answer, but it was tired and sluggish, and all she could think was that the air felt suddenly electric.

“Show yourself,” she called steadily, her voice in direct contrast with her hands. Even if she could not find them exactly, she would let them know that they’d been found, regardless. She straightened slowly, her every movement smooth and unhurried. She was too smart to startle a predator with rapid, escapist behavior.

Her heart raced so heavily she could feel it in her throat, could almost swallow it back down. The longer she stood, the weaker she felt, but adrenaline corded in her a new spine of iron. If she was going down, it wouldn’t be without a fight. She thought about the message she’d sent, just a glimpse of what was to come, and she knew that there wasn’t even an option of choices.

She had to send the message to Naruto, in full.

She used every ounce of adrenaline coursing through her, her left hand flying through the seals as her right dipped and reached for another scroll, already unfurling with inked lines of code disappearing into the parchment before she’d even removed it fully from her pouch.

And then, it stopped.

Fingers like cords of steel around her wrist, a breath away from breaking bone.

“Don’t,” the voice said, just over her shoulder, and Hinata wanted to laugh. She twisted in his grip, trying to dislodge her wrist even as her left hand reached for the kunai at her hip.

It happened so fast, she wasn’t even sure she would’ve seen it even if she had been firing on all cylinders. One moment he was there, at her shoulder and the next he had her back to a tree, both wrists held against the bark. Hinata blinked and felt a wary combination of relief and wariness curl within her as she recognized her opposition.

 _I should’ve known,_ she thought dazedly, a moment before her adrenaline fizzled and consciousness escaped her.

 _Silence that made silence stand out_.

What was Uchiha Sasuke doing on the borders of Mist?

 

✧

 

Hinata blinked her eyes open once more as consciousness returned, and found herself staring at wooden walls. She sat up abruptly and her vision swam for her trouble, even as Sasuke walked into the room and gave her a disapproving look. Hinata felt the hairs on her nape stand up in response to his proximity, even as he walked around her wordlessly and set a tray of food in front of her. He was dressed in shadows, obsidian from head to toe, and Hinata felt even more uncertain about his presence here.

He moved to the opposite side of the room and crouched to sort through a pack, her eyes never once leaving him. She was pleased to note that her vision no longer swam, and there was only the slightest pressure behind her temples. She held up her hands and found them steadier, though she still felt weak. She reached for the dressing on her ribs and felt that it was dry. She wondered if the bleeding had stopped and the blood had dried, or if her bandage had been changed.

If it was the latter…Hinata felt herself blushing, despite herself.

She opened her mouth to call out to him, to draw his attention, but the words tangled and dispersed on the surface of her tongue. What should she call him? They were not friends. They were not even really acquaintances, nor were they really even compatriots. He had left the village at a young age, betraying everything she protected, everything she cherished.

Including the members of Team 7, who had grown to be like family to her. They _were_ family.

And he had walked away from them.

So she was at a crossroads of identifiers; what did she call the betrayer of her loved ones, who had also, however inadvertently, just saved her life?

“Uchiha-san,” she offered, a neutral in-between. It was an attempt to try out her voice, which she found to be hoarse, too-long unused. She cleared her throat and was about to try again, before he glanced over his shoulder at her. There was a curiousness to his posture, muted and buried under jaded ennui.

“Drink,” he said, and turned away from her once more. Hinata frowned, turning back to the tray he’d brought her. She had no reason to suspect it, given that he was now a fellow Konoha shinobi, semi-newly reinstated under the Nanadaime’s order. But Hinata had always been wary of Uchiha Sasuke, prodigy and sole survivor of the Uchiha clan, traitor to her village, brother to the man she had loved for more than a decade. She was wary of this man, and for good reason; she knew from Sakura’s exasperated but warning testimonies that Uchiha Sasuke could wield words and looks as efficiently and lethally as he did blades.

Words that could cut. Eyes that could _kill_.

But then, she realized with renewed confidence, those were not reason enough for her to be frightened away. A cascade of brown hair came to mind, a handsome and jarring expression of indifference that clashed with the blade of a quick tongue. Neji had never been afraid to cut with _his_ words, either. And as for eyes that could kill, well. Hinata’s younger sister was a prodigy herself.

Hinata reached for the drink he’d left her, and was pleased to feel the water cold and refreshing. She tried to take it in slowly, but she was dehydrated, lips chapped, and couldn’t remember the last time she’d had ice cold water. At best, she’d had tepid water from her pack, or cooked from a stream.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, with silence as her only answer. She took several more swallows before setting the cup down and feeling out her limbs, still aching but less so than the day before. Had it only been a day? How long had she been out? She turned again to ask Sasuke, and found instead an empty room.

She hadn’t even heard him leave.

She was growing rather frustrated by that.

She rose slowly, getting her footing steadily before proceeding towards the door. She tried to listen for him, avidly focusing, but all she could hear were the chirps of birds, the groans of tree trunks swaying, and the soft babble of a nearby stream. She pushed open the door and there he was, within hearing distance, but so unquestionably reticent. He sat on the front steps with his blade on his lap, sharpening it meticulously.

Hinata didn’t want to startle him, her own self-preservation at the forefront of her mind, but she wasn’t arrogant enough to think that _she_ was silent enough to escape _his_ notice. She may move quietly, but she was no Uchiha Sasuke.

She came to sit beside him, her every movement carefully controlled. She found herself approaching him quite like the predator she’d thought him to be, slow to grow out of that response.

“Thank you for the water,” she said quietly, not wanting to disturb the peaceful air around them. “And the food.”

Sasuke didn’t say anything, but she saw his movements slow for only a moment, as if considering. The next moment they returned dutifully to his work, and Hinata glanced around them to better gauge their surroundings. He had brought her to a wooden cabin, only so big as the one room she had woken in. There were trees touching the sky on every side, and no sign of the stream she could just barely hear over the metallic slide of Sasuke’s blade. The grass was tall enough to tickle her elbows, swaying ever gently, caressed by the breeze. She frowned.

“What is this place?”

“A safehouse.”

Hinata turned back to him, pursing her lips. She watched his movements for a few moments, hoping that he didn’t feel uncomfortable under her gaze. His body language was relaxed, his shoulders comfortably languid, much like a lazing cat. He didn’t seem to mind her staring.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” She prefaced, careful as always, “But how safe would you say this area is? Considering our location.”

Sasuke didn’t hesitate. “Safe enough.” He waited a moment longer, almost reflecting, before he offered: “We are further South than you previously understood.”

Hinata’s eyebrows jumped, and she found herself glancing around again, studying the types of trees, the position of the sun, the weeds at their feet. He was right, she realized. This vegetation was less characteristic of Mist. They were closer to home than when she had lost consciousness. She wondered how far her cave was from here, and was amused that suddenly a formation in the mountain had become _hers_ just because she’d taken shelter there. This, she thought, was Shino’s influence. The man had a connection to the Earth that was unparalleled, and she’d found herself attuned and receptive to that outlook early on in her girlhood.

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “Alright.”

And then, realizing her own rudeness, she flushed and added, “Thank you for bringing me here.”

At that, Sasuke’s eyes drifted over to her. She felt pinned under his gaze, sharp and barbed, endless shadows. His eyes traced her expression, the heat of her cheeks, and she watched the shift in him; it was something immeasurable, she couldn’t put it into words. He moved without moving, his dark eyes roving, and she felt mixed parts at ease and trapped.

She almost expected him to simply accept her thanks and return to his work. All she knew of him was common knowledge in the village, and what the rest of Team 7 had shared with her about their experiences with him. If she was honest with herself, she had always felt the slightest tinge of outsider’s resentment for Sasuke.

She understood what it meant to be a piece in a game, manipulated by higher powers—any shinobi did, though especially those who grew up in clan dynamics. She could not understand, however, how he felt losing his clan. Having them _taken_ from him. She thought of Hanabi, of Neji, of her father and Ko and all the women who had helped her grow and her heart _ached_. She didn’t know if she could’ve lived without them, had they been taken from her at such a young age, as he’d experienced.

But she could not realistically imagine betraying her closest friends, her village, and all the people who tried to get closer to help him heal after the fact. That was not even an option for her. But Sasuke had done that and gone several steps further; he’d teamed up with an evil man who had murdered a beloved Hokage, and he had even attempted, though halfheartedly, to harm the members of his team when they had sought him out.

Hinata wanted to think, _unforgivable_ , but she couldn’t. Hinata had never struggled to forgive, and when she thought of Sasuke the child surrounded by murder at his kin’s hand, her anger waned. He was a product of what had been done to him, and that didn’t excuse his past dark behaviors, but there was something to be said for him coming back to Konoha and _trying to make it right_.

She decided that he was just…complicated.

Now, sitting beside him, Hinata was reminded of the tales Sakura had told her about Sasuke’s stoicism, his aversion to idle conversation. Hinata was more confident in herself and her worth than she had been as a young girl, but even still, she did not expect Sasuke, a relative stranger to her, to want to pursue conversation with her any more than he had to. She waited for him to turn away from her, maybe to nod his head or at the most, to say _you’re welcome_. He did none of those things.

“What were you thinking?” He asked instead, and there was an edge to the question that almost tasted of frustration. Hinata frowned, wondering at that.

“I’m sorry?”

And there was the temper she had heard about from Sakura all those years, flashing in the depths of his eyes. It was there one moment and gone the next, extinguished under indifference. Fascinating, Hinata thought absently, even as she felt her heart thump against her ribcage. “What were you thinking, walking around in that state?”

Understanding curled around her, and she felt her cheeks flush even as she straightened her posture further. “I was returning home.”

“You were limping to your grave.”

Her own anger prodded, Hinata turned towards him further and matched his stare as best as she could. She ignored her heated cheeks, rapidly spreading to the tips of her ears. The realization was sudden, then, that Sasuke was unquestionably beautiful, in a way that almost hurt to see—but Hinata would not back down.

“I was okay,” she began, but before she could continue Sasuke’s gaze sharpened, heavy with disapproval. After a moment of pause she argued, “Maybe I was a little worse for wear, but I was up to the challenge.”

Sasuke shifted, and if Hinata had known him better she would’ve said that there was a softened edge to that expression that was almost _fond_ , but this was Uchiha Sasuke and the only thing he’d ever been fond of was vengeance. And, if Sakura’s drunken gossip was true, maybe cats, too.

“Hinata,” he said, not unkindly, “You tripped over a tree root, and it brought you to your knees.”

Hinata bristled with indignation and a little bit of shame, that he had seen that moment of hers. Simultaneously, in a darker and less familiar corner of her, another kind of heat flared. He had remembered her name.

“Well!” She sniffed, turning away from him so he couldn’t read her like the open book she was. “Maybe I wasn’t doing so great after all.”

Sasuke allowed the silence between them to last, his hands moving carefully, his wrists delicate but strong. Hinata glanced down from the corner of her eyes and noticed scars, there.

“That being said,” he muttered at last, voice so low she felt herself leaning slightly towards him to better hear it. “I still don’t understand what you were thinking traveling like that. If I had been Mist—”

“I know.” Hinata whispered, acknowledging the unspoken statement. It unfurled within her, overcame her, the knowledge she’d been denying herself since she’d left the cave. Had she been intercepted by an enemy, she would not have lived. She had been in too poor a state.

“Foolish,” Sasuke added, almost as an afterthought, and Hinata wondered at the expression that grew across his face at that word—something nostalgic.

“Yes,” she admitted almost silently, scuffing a sandal against the hardwood step below her. She glanced back to him as he continued sharpening his blade, and really let herself look at him.

She had always been blinded by Naruto, the bright figurehead of her heart’s desire. Where the village had highlighted Sasuke’s prodigious skills and handsome looks, Hinata had only had eyes for Naruto’s unshaking faith, his square fists. She didn’t remember much of Sasuke, back then; only rumors, and gossip, and her friends’ daydreams.

She looked now and it was not difficult to see why his presence alone had carved out a place in the village only the sun could rival. There was a chiseled kind of beauty to him, all angles and edges, the sharp arrow of his nose. He seemed a statue come alive, so pale he nearly glowed under the rays of heat. His dark hair looked soft, though Hinata would never dare to reach out and test the theory—for every angle of Sasuke that was beautiful, there was an added edge that was dangerous. There was no questioning his power, even now with his posture relaxed, shoulders hunched over his blade, and his wrists unhurried with ease of movement. There was not a doubt in Hinata’s mind that even though he moved languidly, slow and easy and drawing to the eye, there was a caged panther lurking beneath.

Hinata could understand the draw, there. She still had chills over her skin just by sitting this close to him, and she had never really looked twice at Uchiha Sasuke. Now, she found it was difficult to look away. And the chills? They remained, though she reflected that could’ve been due to the weird electric current to the air around them. She still hadn’t identified that added energy.

The sounds of stone against steel disappeared, and Hinata blinked at the sudden change only to find Sasuke had stopped working and was meeting her stare with a muted expression. Embarrassed, she quickly jerked her gaze away and returned to assessing their surroundings. How long had she been staring, lost in her own thoughts? She didn’t care enough to consider that she had fled from that little confrontation, however small it may have been.

A moment later, the slide of stone and steel returned, just like that.

They sat together in relative quiet, allowing their bodies to heal in a rare moment of relaxation. Hinata couldn’t help her mind from crawling back to the enigma at her side, who seemed all too suddenly confusing to her. Her friends had described him differently than this. Harder, more guarded. Less abiding. Less _conversational_.

Hinata wondered again what he was doing on the border of Mist, and why he had intercepted her. How had he found her? How long had he been following her? Was his mission in conflict with hers? She wouldn’t give up information as critical as— _her message!_

She leapt to her feet immediately, and for the first time since she’d woken, Sasuke’s posture became tense. He didn’t hesitate in his movements, but his shoulders became defined, the muscles in his arms tense with foretold movement. The electricity in the air snapped, and Hinata’s chills raced down her spine anew.

“My mission!” She exclaimed, her heart racing. She turned but didn’t look at Sasuke, didn’t see him. She strode back into the house and swiftly gathered her belongings, strapping them back on to her person and heading back for the door. She found Sasuke in the same spot she’d left him, still sharpening his katana, still stiff and ready to pounce.

“I have to go,” she explained, without really explaining. There was something to be said about the regret she felt, for having broken the calm atmosphere they’d shared. She ignored it, however, and hesitated in front of him, unsure of this strange thing between them that had allowed them to share peace and quiet with each other despite the chaos of their careers, their lives. The moments felt strange, somehow, already so far in her past but untouchable. Pure, in a way.

“Thank you for—everything.” She said, beginning to walk backwards and away from him. His movements stopped and he watched her silently until she turned and he was removed from her sight once more. She started at a jog, and when she realized she already felt stronger, she began to run.

Had Sasuke given her an antidote? Had he known the poison? She felt healthier, stronger. He must have done _something_ , and that, she realized, didn’t sit right with her if she was just going to leave. She stopped at the edge of the trees, hesitating for only a moment, before she turned back to him. He was still watching her, that strange prowling stillness strung tight like a bow in every line of his frame. She waved a hand and called, “I owe you one, Uchiha-san!”

And then she turned, and ran for home.

 

✧

 

Hinata had run the entire way back to Konoha and felt a different kind of exhaustion as she finished her debriefing in the Hokage’s office. Naruto looked on at her with clear concern, an open book as he always was. Hinata stood straight and tall and her voice was steady as she spoke. Hinata had long since lost the feeling of awkwardness standing in front of Naruto, the man she had once confessed to. All that was left for her now was her duty to her Hokage, and her admiration and love for her friend.

Naruto concluded their briefing with a long, drawn-out sigh, running his hands through his hair. He looked handsome, but so tired. Hinata worried for him silently, hoping that he was getting enough sleep. She must’ve projected that worry onto him, because in the next moment he asked, “Are you sure you’re okay, Hinata?”

Hinata tried to stand straighter, to dispel any signs of her weakness. She was a Jounin of Konoha, she had done her mission, and she was ready for the next. Hopefully she could have a few days in-between and get some sleep and tend to her garden and go play with Mirai—but her duty to her village always came first.

“I’m fine, Hokage-sama.” She hesitated, wondering if it was okay to share such a thing with her Hokage, who just so happened to also be her friend. In the end, she decided to go with it. She admitted, “It was a long mission.”

Naruto’s worry didn’t wane in the slightest. “That’s true,” he agreed, starting to stand from his chair. Hinata blinked, wondering if he was going to come around the desk to comfort her. She had to shake the mental image off, surprised at it. She had not thought of Naruto romantically for years, and yet ever since she ran into Sasuke, Naruto had re-surfaced in her thoughts. Ino would probably say it was some sort of revival in her romantic side, or something, Hinata thought wryly. Sakura would probably say that Hinata was simply _thirsty_.

She wasn’t sure she wanted either of those things to be true. She was doing just fine on her own.

“Hey,” Naruto said, and her intuition had been right. He came around the front of his desk and moved as if to cup a hand on her shoulder, but his eyes leapt from hers to somewhere over her shoulder and he faltered. Blinking and curious, Hinata turned and jolted when she saw Sasuke standing there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were heavily lidded, watchful, and Hinata wondered how long he’d been there, and how soon after she’d left had he followed.

“Bastard,” Naruto greeted him suspiciously, but with a small quirk to his lips. “You’re back early. Like _really_ early.”

Hinata turned back to Naruto, unsure of where she should look. In fact, she realized, she’d probably been silently dismissed. Moving on that estimation, she bowed slightly in Naruto’s direction and turned, dropping her chin slightly to acknowledge Sasuke before moving for the door. Before she could even make it, Naruto called, “You sure you’re okay, Hinata? I could make a clone to walk you home?”

Hinata frowned, turning over her shoulder with a look of disapproval. Naruto rubbed at his nape and laughed self-deprecatingly.

“Okay, okay, bad idea,” he admitted, and Hinata felt herself smile.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said, and then bowed once more, dismissing herself. “If that’s all, Hokage-sama?”

“Ah, Hinata, I told you not to call me that!”

“Dumbass,” Sasuke interrupted, unfurling from the wall. “Let her go home.”

“Don’t call me dumbass, dumbass!”

And with that, Hinata, smiling, moved out of the Hokage’s office. She headed down the hallway and nodded to fellow Jounin, and those who recognized her as the Hyuuga Clan Head’s Advisor. Hanabi would probably be in a meeting when Hinata returned home for _her_ debriefing on their clan happenings. She winded down the twisted staircase and took a deep breath of fresh air at her first step outside the building. She was looking forward to her bed, and the probability that Neji would make her a meal, despite her telling him he didn’t need to. If he was not on mission, of course.

The sun was just barely starting to set as she made her way through the village, winding in and out of the foot traffic. She allowed her mind to trail in the clouds for only a moment before her thoughts returned to her stolen intelligence.

The likelihood of a traitor in Naruto’s midst, feeding Mist Intel.

She was only a few blocks away from the Hyuuga manor when she felt a presence at her side, almost deliberately so, and turned to see Sasuke slouching beside her, perfectly in tune with her steps. She startled to a stop, so surprised at him being there, and just blinked up at him. He met her gaze and she could read nothing of his expression, just that he was there, for reasons unknown, and he wasn’t about to explain it, either.

“Uchiha-san,” she greeted cautiously, nodding her head. “Did you need something?”

“No.”

“No?” Hinata reiterated, and got nothing in return. She pursed her lips, nodding slowly. Then, she simply started walking again. A moment later, she felt him at her elbow, not close enough to touch, but almost. His hands were tucked in his pockets and his footsteps were as silent as the grave, but he was letting her know he was there even though she could see him out of the corner of her eye.

“You know, Uchiha-san,” she said conversationally, after it became clear that he was not going to separate from her. “With all due respect, I distinctly remember telling Naruto-kun that I don’t need an escort home.”

“That’s true,” he agreed easily. Hinata waited a moment.

“Must I repeat the same sentiment, even though you were in the room for the first?”

Sasuke didn’t falter. “What if there are tree roots in your path?”

Hinata’s cheeks flared, her lips parting around an almost-silent gasp. Was he—being playful? She turned to gauge his expression and found nothing noticeable but for a swift gleam in his eyes as he glanced down at her. It appeared he was laughing at her.

Hinata turned back ahead and was left speechless with the realization that Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura’s teammate, known for being ice cold and as emotionally expressive as a moldy stone, was playing with her. And what’s more, he had saved her life, brought her to a safehouse, had let her see a side to him that she was uncertain the world knew about.

She was, at the very least, _confused_.

And, though it was stranger still to admit it: she was intrigued.

They turned a corner and she was home, the skyscraping walls of her compound rising before them. She turned to Sasuke and didn’t know what to say, how to remark on his behaviors and how curious they made her. Instead, she offered him a shy, questioning smile that he did not reflect. He simply watched her, head tilted slightly, as she said, “Have a nice night, Uchiha-san.”

And Sasuke, the beautiful, but emotionally stunted stone she’d grown up hearing about, reached out to tuck some of her hair behind her ear as if it was the most normal gesture in the world. His expression didn’t change, bored and indifferent even as she froze in place, every curve of her tense. His eyes flickered between her own, and his voice was heartbreakingly small when at last he responded.

He said, “Goodnight, Hinata.”

And then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Time passed, leaves turned, and Hinata’s original intel from Mist turned out to be the beginning of something subversively sinister. Naruto had Team 8 running constant reconnaissance, trying to sniff out the mole, while Sakura, Tsunade, and Shizune worked on an antidote to a new and lethal poison. It was Mist’s concoction, man-made and droplet-based; it had taken the lives of several Konoha shinobi scouting Mist’s borders.

They were struggling with it. There was something about the mist itself, droplet of lethality, and they couldn’t segregate the contents enough to create a cure. Hinata herself had been called in to Sakura’s office, a tiny corner of the hospital that never ceased to appear storm-blown. Sakura had drilled her for every possible sign and symptom she’d experienced on her trip back to the village, wondering over the blurred vision, the body aches. She wanted every detail, and Hinata had thought back and given her all she had to offer.

She decided to leave out the part about fainting in Sasuke’s arms, and waking up in a safehouse it seemed only he knew about. She’d searched a map for it and found nothing; asked her mentor about it and only received a curious look in response. Even Kiba and Akamaru had no idea about it, and they were partial to chasing scents and exploring on missions.

“Wooden?” Shino asked, when she brought it up to him on a whim.

She hummed in response, searching his mostly hidden features. The trees of Nara forest groaned around them, so dense and tall the sky had yet to be visible. The only lighting came through the canopies, in varying flickers of gold. Hinata’s wounds had healed, for the most part, with healing chakra for aid. She’d had Sakura check the wound on her ribs, just in case, and was relieved when Sakura clarified the absence of infection. She’d hesitated near the end of their visit, though, and Hinata felt amusement curl through her at the memory.

Sakura, hesitating but undeniably honest: “This dressing, though, Hinata…it’s kind of sloppy. Don’t get me wrong! I know you were probably busy trying to stay alive and all, totally understandable, but—”

And Hinata, suddenly remembering the clean bandage she didn’t remember applying herself, and Sasuke’s disapproving eyes when she’d moved too quickly after waking. She’d soothed Sakura’s nerves and accepted the criticism easily, going with Sakura’s own lead of being a little busy. Shinobi prodigy he might be, but Sasuke knew nothing about applying field dressings.

After she’d left the hospital, Hinata had found herself entertaining the wildest of inclinations; to _tease_ him about it.

She did not in fact follow through on that inclination, but found humor in it all the same.

“Yes,” she told Shino now, resting on a fallen log that her near-perfectly controlled chakra had sliced through entirely. She rubbed at her shoulder where Shino had managed to land a nasty hit, and watched him rub at a few different joints. She’d managed a few nasty hits, as well. “I’m not entirely certain how far from Mist we were, but there were fields of cordgrass, and on the outskirts I could just barely see Toyon plants.”

“Heteromeles arbutifolia?“ Shino reiterated, surprised. Hinata dipped her chin in response, toeing at the dirt beneath her feet. Shino seemed to evaluate that response, and within minutes he had a definitive answer for her.

“Toyon plants are native to the towns just past the falls, near the eastern pavilions. Not close.”

“Not quite as far as I anticipated, though.” Hinata responded curiously, knowing well the area of the eastern pavilions; towers of weeded stone that grazed the sky, modern machinations to mirror and mimic the forest of Konoha.

“Did the cordgrass appear healthy?”

“Very,” Hinata smiled, turning to see Shino pretending to be only casually interested in her answer. Shino was very serious about flora. “They nearly reached my chest!”

Shino smiled, the corners of his lips only just barely visible above his collar as he shifted, leaning back to dig his fingers into the dirt. He sighed, content, and Hinata had to stifle an amused grin from his notice. He was so predictable.

After a long moment of quiet between them, Shino turned back to her with an air of playful suspicion and asked, “Hinata, how did you convince Nara-san to allow us to spar here?”

“Hm,” Hinata hummed, briefly distracted by a monarch butterfly near her elbow. “Shikaku-san expressed an interest in herbs, and asked if I might seek and explore on his behalf.”

Shino made a disbelieving sound, somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “Nara-san is fond of you.”

Hinata smiled, shy. “He is an interesting man.”

“This sudden interest in herbs,” Shino started perceptively, “Did it factor into you asking me, specifically, to spar with you here?”

Hinata blushed, found out. “Maybe,” she said, turning to gauge his expression. His sunglasses gleamed, catching a single beam of sunlight for just a second. Hinata could sense his amusement and felt herself laughing lightly in response.

“Thank you for inviting me,” he intoned, amused.

“Don’t pretend like you haven’t wanted to scour these lands to study the flora since the moment we got here, Shino-kun!”

Shino huffed quietly, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

“Maybe,” he mimicked her, and shot a quick smile her way. “There has been something else on my mind since we arrived, as well.”

“Oh?”

“Uchiha-san,” Shino began easily, ignoring the way that Hinata straightened in response. She tried to hide the reaction by smoothing out even more, pretending to be distracted with a stray fray of fabric on the edge of her jacket. She’d have to fix that when she returned home.

Hinata didn’t have to fake her question, or her careless tone when she asked, “What about him?”

Since she’d returned home from that mission with Sasuke apparently hot on her trail so many months ago, she had not spoken to him at all. She had barely even seen him around the village, and didn’t think much of that. Naruto had had to pull an intricate labyrinth of strings for Sasuke to be allowed back into Konoha, and what’s more, to be reinstated citizenship after what he had done. She was sure that Sasuke was merely paying his dues, so to speak, and as such was kept rather busy.

It hadn’t occurred to her that he had been on anyone else’s mind but her own, though. That Shino was asking about him was bizarre, considering she’d never seen the two of them interact before. And it wasn’t like she was talking to Sasuke, either. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him, let alone talked to him. Had it been a week ago? A glimpse through the throngs of people in the market, searching for groceries or scrolls or a respite from missions? She couldn’t recall.

“Haven’t you noticed a change in him?” Shino asked, startling Hinata enough to draw her attention back to him, and away from idle distractions. She studied what she could of his expression and body language under his high collar and coat, and wondered what she might have missed. He was clearly hinting at something, thinking she should’ve noticed. She felt a tinge of shame that maybe she, with her incredible, all-seeing eyes, had missed something trivial but important.

“A change?” She asked, actively thinking back and trying to remember the last time she’d run into Uchiha Sasuke. A week, maybe a little more than a week ago. Not in the market, but the Hokage tower, in line to submit a report to Iruka-sensei behind the counter. He’d been walking out, right past her as she waited deep in the winding line, and the only acknowledgement she could remember receiving was a glance and a nod in her direction. “I haven’t noticed anything different about him, Shino-kun.”

Shino smiled like a trap, and Hinata felt the air around them shift.

And then he said, “Then you haven’t been paying proper attention, Hinata.”

Affronted at his insinuation, she felt herself bristle. She frowned at him, disapproving.

“He doesn’t go out of his way to talk to anyone. He does his duty, spends time with his team, and trains in the grounds.” Frustrated and suspicious, she narrowed her eyes. “What are you hinting at?”

But that, she thought, was too easy. Shino seemed to agree, merely humming in response.

“He talks to you,” he said at last, startling her again.

“When?”

“Often,” he said, rather pointedly. “For him, at least.”

“When?” She demanded again, trying to refresh her memory and find any time in the past few months that she had had a conversation with Uchiha Sasuke.

“You expect me to believe,” Shino started, “That it isn’t strange for him to visit the market as often as he does? Or turn in his reports when we do?”

“He,” Hinata hesitated, eyes flickering as her memories began to match with Shino’s words. She hadn’t actively noticed it, not enough to recognize it without study, but what Shino said wasn’t wrong. Often she crossed paths with Sasuke in the Hokage tower, simply turning in reports. She’d catch glimpses of raven hair in the market place, spikey and in disarray, enough to know it was him; his sharp gaze through the fractured headspace of a busy street, staring right at her.

“He lives independently!” She defended, even as her memories began to grow, and show more and more of Sasuke in her proximity than she remembered. “Maybe he’s a poor shopper. Maybe it’s all a—”

“Coincidence?” Shino finished, his tone the verbal equivalent to rolling one’s eyes. “Unlikely.”

Hinata could see it now, undeniably. On countless recent outings he was there, on the outskirts of her memories, nondescript in memory but present with active recall. She didn’t know whether to be bothered or intrigued by his presence, but found herself in a mixed state of both; a frazzled, confused kind of frustration. Did he have something to say? Did he have a problem with her? Why hadn’t he simply approached her, then?

But Hinata had a past of her own, and she remembered distinctly the difficulty of approaching someone, if even to offer simple words. Her mind flashed to the chuunin exams, and the healing salve she’d made Naruto; the way her words had tripped and trembled and ultimately ceased, her arms extending the salve to him without explanation. Maybe Sasuke wasn’t just icy, or acerbic, but a little awkward?

“Well,” she offered, bemused. “So what?”

But if Shino had given her an answer then, it would’ve been too easy. Her team had nothing on the mind games that took place on Neji’s team, but Shino and Kiba _were_ at times partial to playful mind games. Only when they knew their information to be harmless, though, which made Hinata feel slightly relieved despite her confusion. She groaned lightly before rocking herself up to stand and gesturing for Shino to follow her. She was sore from the spar, pleasantly so, and knew that she’d be asking Hanabi to stop by the hot springs with her later that night. Surely Hanabi would join her, considering she’d be spending her afternoon training Mirai.

“This way, then, mischief maker,” she called over her shoulder, smiling but hiding her expression from Shino. She could hear him following her, as she knew that he would. “There’s an interesting batch of shrub verbenas over here.”

She set Shino loose on the poisonous flowers while she considered this new information. She had a lot to think about, which was probably Shino’s plan the entire time, so she didn’t mind throwing him into work as she stood by and distractedly wondered what all this Sasuke nonsense meant.

Just a few months ago Sasuke had not even made it onto her mind at all, let alone been a present figure in her life. Now he seemed the only presence there, frustratingly so, and Hinata could suddenly feel a meddlesome warmth in her chest that seemed to accompany thoughts of him, and that—

That only made her more curious.

Dangerously so.

 

✧

 

The next time Hinata came home from a mission, she paid closer attention.

She rested well, let herself heal, and woke up early the next morning for a spar with three of her favorite people.

“Are you sure it’s going to rain today?” Sakura asked, matching her stride for careless stride as they headed into the center of their favorite sparring grounds, right on the walled border of Nara forest.

Hinata said, “I’m almost certain.” She glanced up into the blue sky, shielded her eyes temporarily from the brightness of the overhead sun. In the distance, clouds. A multitude of them, too smudged for the average eye to distinguish. Hinata’s eyes were far from average.

Sakura hummed, pulling an arm across her chest to stretch her shoulder. She rested her weight on her left hip, and Hinata rotated her wrists, testing her joints.

She felt her charka signature approaching before she heard her, scuffing steps and the slightest clank of concealed steel. Hinata turned up to her with a grin already spreading over her face, and Tenten mirrored her expression teasingly. She reached out and ruffled Hinata’s hair, almost as an older sister might, and greeted Sakura with a friendly nod.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Sakura called insolently, showing too many teeth. Hinata nearly rolled her eyes, already knowing with that single look that she was going to be going home beaten to the bone. Tenten returned her friendly animosity with a pointed grin, and was it Hinata’s imagination or were her incisors longer than normal?

“Better watch it,” Tenten laughed, pulling her favorite battle axe out of thin air. She rested the monstrosity of steel and leather over her shoulders, arms loping around the extensive handle. She wielded it as if it weighed nothing, a testament to her own version of chakra control, and Hinata flicked her eyes over to see Sakura eye the weapon warily, re-calculating. “This cat’s got _claws_.”

Hinata swallowed. _Bruises_ , she thought, _we’re all going home with so many bruises today_.

Luckily, they had two licensed medics present, and Ino and Tenten knew basic field life support. They didn’t say much else, then, but continued stretching different parts of their bodies, readying for the intensity of what they were all certain was coming. They were in no hurry to begin, either, considering they were waiting for one other.

After much time and stretching had passed, Sakura muttered, “You’d think she’d be punctual.” Tenten huffed, dropping her battle axe until it cleaved halfway into the earth, shaking the ground beneath them. She hopped atop the hilt and balanced on the tips of her toes, her other leg extended behind her head; a ballerina’s grace and posture, atop a weapon of ultimate lethality. She was beautiful, and powerful, and Hinata could see again so much of what Neji adored about her.

In contrast, Hinata began her third sun salutation while listening to the birds specific to Nara forest—musical creatures with impeccable volume—and the soft whistle of wind through the canopies.

“Maybe she’s having a rough day,” Hinata mused.

Sakura snorted. “More like she’s the cause of someone else’s rough day.”

Tenten laughed, and Hinata considered that for a single moment, expression brightening with humor. She ended up nodding, conceding to Sakura’s smug expression.

They didn’t have to wait much longer after that, as a single golden spec appeared in the distance, moving at a casual jog. Ino slowed to a walk when she was within hearing distance, and Hinata watched with hushed curiosity as Ino casually pulled her interrogator’s gloves from her fingers. They were spotless, as always; her damage done internally.

The gloves unsettled her captors, though, and amused Ino. That alone was incentive enough for her to wear them routinely.

“It’s so fucking _hot_ ,” Ino groused, finally within reach. She offered her knuckles to a still-balancing Tenten, who met them knuckle for knuckle, before swooping over to Sakura to press a kiss against her forehead. She turned to Hinata with a spark in her eyes that promised trouble.

“It is,” Hinata said hesitantly, watchful of that devious look in Ino’s eyes. “Rain later, though.”

“Yeah,” Ino agreed sardonically, rolling her eyes up at the sky. “Hot, humid rain.”

Hinata’s smile was a shy shadow of her usual mirth, gently amused but distracted. Under her cool façade, Ino looked frazzled. That was never a good _or_ safe sign. Hinata could see the wear on her, the heaviness of her shoulders. Usually Ino turned down sparring sessions planned immediately after her work underground, in one section of Konoha’s darkest shadows.

Today had been different; she had accepted.

Ino started stretching, jumping lightly to shake out her limbs and the stress lining her frame.

Her work underground took a mighty toll; the shadows clung to her, and Hinata saw it all. She didn’t imagine it was easy to shake those off. And yet, when Ino was done hopping around there was less malice in her expression, and more teasing. She hid her demons well.

Hinata thought better of asking her about it, considering Ino rarely responded to her own weakness with anything but acidic denial—which she would then later soothe over with Sakura, who was about the only person alive who knew how to tame Ino’s most venomous side. 

Hinata wouldn’t have had the chance, anyways, as Ino finally turned to face her completely, her lips curled in a playful kind of lethality.

“So guess what I heard the other day,” Ino started, and then pretended to pause, if only to tap one perfectly manicured finger against her chin. “And every day since then, actually.”

Hinata, bemused, tilted her head. Tenten looked as questioning as Hinata did but with far more boredom. Sakura watched her girlfriend with muted humor before turning her eyes to Hinata, and it was sudden, the way Hinata felt trapped. Their spar had begun even earlier than she had expected, and in a direction she had not expected—one without physical form.

 _Uh oh_ , she thought, right as Ino came to hang over Sakura’s shoulders, laughing even as her words fell like wind chime explosions.

“ _Somebody_ ,” she sang, “Has managed to catch a certain handsome, if entirely emotionally constipated Uchiha survivor’s attention. _Intensely_ so.”

Hinata froze, shocked but also somehow…unsurprised. As though out of all the reasons that Ino had come prepared to tease her, somewhere in her subconscious she had been prepared for this.

She had honestly expected Ino to get at her sooner; there wasn’t a single person in the village who had a stronger hand in village gossip than Ino, though Kiba was a very close second. And he had sniffed out about Sasuke’s strange behavior weeks ago.

It came to her, then, that he must’ve been lording it over Ino for _weeks_. Adding stress to the strain; Ino was a beam bent on breaking, but stubbornly holding.

“ _Sasuke_?” Tenten gasped, eyes leaping to Hinata in mixed parts accusation and clarification, as though searching Hinata’s expression for the truth. She found it immediately, and a surprised laugh bubbled out of her without her control. “Oh,” she said, not without sympathy, “Neji is gonna love that.”

Before Hinata could even think to touch _that_ , Sakura’s voice interrupted.

“Hinata,” Sakura sang, separating her name into striking syllables, each of which made Hinata flinch. She knew them too well to let her guard down, but there was something about Sakura’s practiced quiet that was so much the more terrifying than when she shouted. Ino’s influence, definitely. “ _Spill_.”

Hinata knew better than to play dumb; facing down this particular dual-caliber weapon of very different kinds of intelligent required simple honesty. And Tenten had an eye for honesty, so much so that Hinata had wondered at times if it was some sort of unnamed, special power.

Regardless, lying was out of the question.

Either she exposed everything she knew right off the bat, or they’d systematically strip her of every falsity and excuse, until she was exposed regardless. She’d rather fast-track the process and save herself the trouble and the embarrassment.

“I only just recently noticed,” She admitted, making sure to keep herself standing tall. She tried not to blink too much, or look away. Ino was still hanging over Sakura, comfortably possessive, and Sakura had her arms crossed over her light but powerful chest. Tenten came to stand on Sakura’s other side, and for a moment, with three piercing stares so close together and all tearing into her, Hinata thought of Cerberus.

“What did you notice?” Ino encouraged, smiling with too many teeth. Sakura reached up and rubbed at the wrist Ino had slung around her chest, a silent gesture for her to back down slightly. Hinata appreciated it, though she didn’t truly feel as though they outmatched her in this.

“It was brought to my attention that Uchiha-san has begun to act differently, since the mission where we ran into each other.”

“Ah,” Sakura sighed, “The infamous mission.”

“We’ve heard so much about it,” Tenten agreed, leaning against Sakura slightly. “And yet it’s still such a mystery.”

Hinata flushed, an unconscious reaction. “You know what’s important. I wasn’t well, and Sasuke saved my life.”

“He took you to a safehouse,” Tenten reiterated, and Ino’s eyes gleamed.

“He _saved your life_ ,” she emphasized, all too pointedly.

Sakura was shaking her head. “He’s an ass, but that’s not the part that’s weird. Why did you need saving at all?”

Hinata frowned. “I told you about this, Sakura-san. The poison. It happened during the ambush, I believe.”

Sakura’s frown intensified, became dangerous. “But you had your pack.”

“Yes,” Hinata agreed, studying Sakura’s pinched expression. “But as you recall, one of the side effects was blurred vision, and I had it bad.”

“What a coincidence,” Ino hummed, and Tenten finished her unspoken sentiment. “That it just so happened to be a Hyuuga who first suffered a blow from this new Mist poison, which specifically affects sight.”

Hinata had thought the same thing, and so she only nodded. “Interesting, indeed.”

“And so,” Ino backtracked, “He saved you. How?”

“With an antidote,” Hinata answered, the words coming out slowly as realization caught behind her eyes, brightening them. At the time of her poisoning, there had not been an antidote for that poison yet. In fact, when she’d returned to the village she’d brought it immediately to Tsunade and Sakura, and they had never seen it before. They’d had to synthesize a brand new antidote specifically for it, and yet, all this time, Sasuke—

It seemed her friends realized the same thing a moment after she did, if their shocked and suspicious expressions were anything to go by. Hinata had thought for a moment that Ino had known, and was leading her, but she looked as surprised as Hinata felt.

“There wasn’t an antidote synthesized yet,” Hinata whispered, and her heart began to thunder in her chest. How had he attained it? Did Mist make antidotes for their poisons? It seemed unlike them, but if they had, did they have their shinobi carry them on their persons? Or had Sasuke somehow made it into the heart of Mist and found himself some antidotes?

Had he needed an antidote? Had the poison shaken him, too, and attacked what he trusted most in the world—his sight?

Hinata had an endless bounty of questions, and she could see that her friends did too.

“Sakura-san,” she said, “You should ask Uchiha-san about the antidote. If he had already known about it, he might have—I mean no offense here—a more specific and efficient antidote on hand. The adverse effects left me within a night after he must have administered the dose.”

Sakura pursed her lips, uncaring of Hinata’s practicality but curious as to her directions. She seemed as though she was going to say one thing, then decided against it for the moment to instead clarify, “Just a night? That’s all it took?”

“Yes,” Hinata nodded.

“Fast,” she muttered, and it was at that point that Ino seemed to lose patience.

“I think _you_ should ask him about it,” she offered, almost casually. Hinata’s eyes found hers, and held.

“Sakura-san is his teammate,” Hinata argued, but Tenten was nodding her head, too.

“If he’s been acting differently, and you’re the cause, Hinata-chan, maybe you should approach him about this.” Tenten smiled to soften the way they were inadvertently ganging up on her. “I think that would answer the largest amount of questions that you and the rest of us all have, at this point.”

And, truly, Hinata could not argue with that logic. She looked to Sakura, who merely shrugged.

“Ask him, Hinata,” she agreed. She tilted her head, curious and pensive. “Get to the bottom of this antidote thing, too.”

“I’m hoping for the best here, but there’s been a lot of sketchy shit going on,” Ino added, curling more tightly around Sakura as she offered something she knew might offend her, “And Sasuke, well, he doesn’t have the best track record with village loyalty.”

Sakura looked pressed and ready to argue, but surprisingly enough, it was Hinata who stood up for him.

“He wouldn’t,” she said, uncaring that all three pairs of sharp eyes turned back to her, pinning her in place. She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered something she had not recognized—fingertips like ghosts against her skin, with bark at her spine. They had been gentle. She thought of their shared moment between borders, in the tall grass, surrounded by noxious flowers. The calm between storms.

Her eyes came open and she was steadfast when she responded. “He wouldn’t betray the village again.” Her eyes were drawn to Sakura, who stood tall and proud, her chin raised slightly. Hinata smiled, and her easy and open admiration of Sakura fractured the steel of her impassiveness. “He wouldn’t betray you and Naruto again. Especially now.”

She didn’t have to clarify—Sakura had confided in her months prior about preparing herself to propose to Ino. It was an important time for Sakura, perhaps the most important time of her life thus far, and Sasuke loved her, in his own way. Hinata had a feeling that he knew what she was planning, and she was certain, in the same way that her intuition guided her safely and smartly on the battlefield, that he would not leave her.

The tension in Sakura thawed out and softened, her entire body language becoming an easy tide. She gave the subtlest of nods, and Hinata looked to Ino and Tenten, who were less convinced.

“I will ask him our questions,” Hinata promised, thinking silently of the questions she had of her own.

Ino smiled, a softer and kinder expression. She said, “See, I knew there was something going on between you two.”

Hinata blinked, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks. “There isn’t!”

“You look mighty comfortable with this plan,” Ino offered playfully. “And I’m sure Sasuke will love to finally get more from you than a glance across the market.”

The heat in Hinata’s cheeks flared up to her ears and down to her throat, and she felt all too suddenly the heat of the midday sun overhead.

“I haven’t seen him for a while,” Sakura mused thoughtfully, “I’m so _curious_ about what these looks actually look like. The market, you say?”

Ino, delighted with her girlfriend’s participation, practically gushed. “And the Hokage tower, and, my, the training grounds we _just_ so happen to be standing on!”

“More than one place?” Sakura mused, and hers was a genuine startled curiosity that almost felt more dangerous than Ino’s clear-cut awareness.

“Sasuke has been following her?” Tenten asked, the edge of her tone just this side of protective.

“Sort of,” Ino shrugged. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. It’s probably his way of courting her.”

“Courting!” Hinata gasped, startled and speechless. Ino’s laughter broke through and Hinata found Sakura smiling.

She concluded, “That _is_ pretty unusual Sasuke behavior.”

And—Hinata had been solid up until this point. But embarrassment had her by the throat and she could feel her words coming out in a stutter, and just when she thought she’d get control of herself, she blundered.

She said, “It’s nothing special!”

Which, of course, made all three of the women standing before her suddenly think that yes, in fact, it _was_ special—and Hinata _knew_ it.

Ino’s eyes became alight with flame; a fire that spread rapidly from woman to woman, each of their eyes _burning_.

Hinata had had enough of words. She fell into an offensive gentle fist stance and watched her friends react in kind, each of them laughing even as they fell back defensively, leaping away from one another until each of them assumed the relative territory of the four corners of the field.

Hinata was the first to move.

And she did not hold back.


	3. Chapter 3

Hinata was _frustrated_ ; an emotion she had since begun to regularly associate with one Uchiha survivor.

She had been working herself up to those questions that much needed answers, going so far as to write some of them down late in the night after she’d returned home from missions or other village duties. Seeing the words on parchment brought them into stark focus, an efficient kind of contrast, and it was just what Hinata had needed to bolster her confidence enough to finally seek him out. No matter that it had taken her over a week to do so, with her many friends’ goading and insistent ripostes constantly in her ears.

Regardless, there was a part of her that hadn’t wanted to approach Sasuke unprepared. There was an air to him that was pointed, harsh, effortlessly needling. She couldn’t exactly name the vibe she got from him, but some part of her knew that Sasuke would not appreciate half-hearted attempts at interrogation. If she was going to grill him, to do so in any way that wasn’t lethally precise would be an insult to him.

She didn’t know how she knew that, and that was confusing, too; so she didn’t think about it at all.

She just took her time. She planned her steps and she met his eyes through the clamor of crowds in the market place for a fleeting second of wonder, sunlight through gold-tinged dust motes, and she returned home to the elegant alabaster walls to think things over.

And it was typical, she thought, that the moment she was ready to approach him, he’d vanish.

She pursed her lips, glancing up at the mass of the Uchiha Compound walls in front of her even as she let her fist fall away from the harsh wood. It had splintered, over time. She had waited longer than polite company ought to, and the evening was pressing on without her, so she turned at last and moved away from Sasuke’s personal space. She hadn’t seen him in the markets, or the Tower, and especially not at the training grounds—she had yet to actually catch him glancing at her _there_ , even with her Byakugan activated, but Ino’s sources were unwavering.

Sasuke was gone and she had no idea where, and it wasn’t actually her business. She still found herself irritated, though. She’d spent so much time bolstering her courage, readying her mind and her words, and then she’d run into a wall with someone she was close to, who ultimately pushed her into action.

Surprisingly enough, that wall who finally set her on her way turned out to be Kiba, of all people.

“It’s getting really freakin’ old,” he groaned, nudging her slightly to the side as an older couple passed on their right. Kiba and Hinata both dipped their chins respectfully even as the couple disappeared from view, and Kiba shoved his fists deep into his pockets. Akamaru trailed after them, too giant a fixture to walk at their side through the crowded street. “If you would’ve told me months ago that at this point in my life, I would be bombarded daily with updates about that snake, I would’ve laughed, and then I would’ve ripped bark off a tree with my teeth.”

Hinata attempted to hide her smile but it pushed at the corners of her lips all the same. She reached for Kiba’s elbow and guided him away from a group of genin squatting on the side of the road, drawing plans in the dirt. One of them had a reptilian creature perched on her shoulder, and it looked bored enough to start a fight. “Kiba-kun,” Hinata kept her voice mostly serious, though laughter was banging at the door of her control. “Why would you have needed to do that, of all things?”

Kiba glanced down at her with pursed lips, failing to hide his own amusement even as he tried to appear put out. “That’s not the _point_ , Hinata.”

“Ah,” Hinata agreed wisely, nodding. “The point.”

“The _point_ ,” Kiba repeated, with unnecessary emphasis, “Is that you could solve all my problems here if you just kicked it into gear and asked the snake your questions.”

Hinata frowned. “Kiba-kun, that’s rude.”

Kiba rolled his eyes, unbothered. “A snake’s a snake’s a snake, no matter how many times he sheds his skin.”

Hinata’s frown only deepened, displeased with Kiba’s blatant disapproval. After her spar with the girls, with all of them bleeding and exhausted lying in the fields of their shattered battle grounds, she had garnered a general acceptance to the idea that Sasuke might actually want something more from Hinata than an interrogation. Ino’s words, not Hinata’s.

Had Hinata not known Sakura so well and for so long, she might have thought that Sasuke wouldn’t be interested in any kind of communication, ever. That seemed the safest bet, considering his generally apathetic stoicism and disinclination to add anything to a conversation other than subtle changes in expression, or general vibes of disapproval. Hinata could have worked with that, even, having grown up her entire life beside Shino.

But she had known Sakura nearly her entire life, and Sakura had known Sasuke _her_ entire life, and Sakura shared her girlfriend’s love of gossip. Sasuke had always been a common topic, and over the years Hinata had learned much about the man she had barely ever actually spoken to outside of missions.

Hinata learned two very important and lasting things about Uchiha Sasuke, through Haruno Sakura’s words.

The first was anticlimactically unsurprising; while unashamedly distant and defiantly independent, Uchiha Sasuke loved and welcomed a challenge.

The second had appropriately rocked Hinata’s understanding of the quiet man enough to rekindle in her mind over weeks, months, her curiosity insatiable.

It was this: that Uchiha Sasuke would go out of his way to help people who struggle. Sakura tied it to his impatient nature, which Hinata could totally understand—when you’re a prodigy and most things came easily to you, watching others struggle must seem asinine. Ino called it being a “Nosy Nancy,” insisting that while Sasuke hung out in the shadows he was a little too fond of sticking his perfectly aquiline nose in others’ business.

Hinata wondered idly if it was a combination of the two, with a surprising undercurrent of genuine compassion. She had never voiced it, though, and the thoughts had since left her over the years with nothing more than a surviving curiosity whenever she saw Sasuke. He had changed incredibly over the years, Kiba’s shedding skin analogy fresh in her mind.

But she wondered if as a child he had maintained that same silent, subversive benevolence, that impatience to help those who struggled. A kid in a world of overturned insects, who could’ve easily stepped on them, put them out of their misery.

Instead, would he have freed them—turned them over, gotten them on their feet again, lifted them to get air under their wings?

She just didn’t have enough information to say.

And that was why she needed answers.

She turned to gauge Kiba’s expression and found insolence, and dislike. Her girls may have expressed a gentle, muted kind of acceptance for Sasuke silently merging into her life, but it was clear that that same sentiment was not shared equally across the board.

Kiba was no friend of Sasuke’s; he couldn’t understand or accept disloyalty, ever.

Hinata understood, but there was something to say about forgiveness.

As it was, Kiba was still learning, and it was difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. His voice turned acidic, lashing out. “Ask him your questions and then dump him, Hinata. He’s no good.”

“His mistakes,” She began cautiously, turning away from the storm of Kiba’s response, “Are many and great, Kiba-kun. I don’t argue that.”

Kiba snarled, his only response, and an answering vibration built up behind them. Hinata didn’t have to turn to know Akamaru’s fur was raised, responding directly to Kiba’s sudden change in mood. The people around them shifted unconsciously away from them, not wanting to be anywhere near the heavy pressure of Kiba’s chakra signature. Hinata felt it like a tidal wave of humidity, heavy, pressing, and all-encompassing. Inescapable, if you didn’t know him.

But Hinata knew him.

“Kiba-kun,” her voice was soft, a quiet reprimand, and Kiba blinked. He glanced to the wide circle of open space around them, heard for the first time Akamaru’s low and menacing growl behind them. He stopped walking, turned to kneel for Akamaru and rub at his wide chest, displacing the fur in every which direction.

“It’s okay,” he told Akamaru, but Hinata knew the same sentiment was for himself, too. Hinata gave him time to regain his control, to get a handle on his emotions. When he stood, she offered him the gentleness of a smile, her eyes heavy with affection. His protectiveness was not something she would ever resent, even when it bordered on chaotic.

“Walk with me,” she offered, guiding him with the slightest of touches on his elbow. He fell into step beside her, and she allowed herself to thread her arm through his, holding him to her side. Something of a purr began in his chest, and ordinarily she would’ve laughed and pointed it out—but she had only just managed to diffuse him, and comparing him to a cat was not a smart move.

“I’ll ask him my questions,” she conceded, barely above a whisper. Then, she glanced up to his watchful gaze, studied the sharp crimson lines of the ink in his skin. “I have many to ask, and much to learn from him.”

Her wording, as deliberate as it was truthful, brought out a disgusted snarl in her friend. He rolled his eyes, his temper appropriately ceded. “What good can you learn from a snake.”

Hinata thought this was going to be more difficult than she had originally expected. Kiba’s insistence on derisive nicknames was not a good sign. She ignored it, however, allowing this while she pressed forward.

“He interests me,” she admitted. “There are many secrets around him, and I seem to be involved in them.”

Kiba lifted a sharp nail to rub idly at his lower lip, glancing down at her, considering. For the first time since his outburst, he appeared to be taking her seriously.

“You have awful taste,” he said, not for the first time, and Hinata laughed. He was sharp as a blade when he wanted to be, already seeing past her words to the feelings beneath. They were still complicated and vaguely indecipherable, but Hinata was beginning to understand them herself. She had not lied, when she told him of her interest. Her curiosity.

But there was something more, beyond that, and both of them knew it.

“Ask him your questions,” Kiba repeated, with far less disdain. He was resigned, sighing, but there was a gleam in his eyes that bespoke of violence, if necessary. “I don’t like it, obviously. But if you need this, then I’ll support it. I’ll support you.”

Hinata’s smile was a fresh blooming, but it halted at Kiba’s next tone, and the sly way he turned to her with wild eyes and a new kind of smile, perched on the edge of sharp teeth. Usually, it was bones that crunched between the teeth of this smile.

“But if the snake still has fangs,” he said, and Hinata felt her heart begin to pound. Disapproval spilled over her lips, a frown Kiba pointedly ignored. “Then I’ll teach him what real bite feels like.”

Akamaru huffed behind them, an agreement if Hinata had ever heard one.

In another mood, with a lighter atmosphere, Hinata might have laughed. She might have playfully agreed, tugged on Kiba’s arm, and bought him ice cream afterwards.

But this was not a playful mood, the storm from moments before still riding on the outskirts of Kiba’s wicked smile. Hinata considering him seriously before dipping her chin once, a single acceptance, before idly pulling him along towards the end of the street.

She did not laugh, or playfully agree. The time wasn’t right.

But she did find herself smiling, exasperated even as she was wary; and there was never a wrong time for ice cream.

Kiba added gummy worms, and smiled while he chewed them.

Hinata did not think of snakes and teeth.

 

✧

 

Hinata was a master of reconnaissance. She was on the lead Konoha Jounin team of master trackers. She had a wider range of Byakugan sight than anyone in her entire clan.

And yet, for several days longer still she could not find Uchiha Sasuke.

 _A mission_ , she decided. _Still_.

Frustrated and feeling at the end of her rope, Hinata hesitated before the massive walls of the Uchiha compound. She had been warring with herself for weeks; a constant battle between courtesy and obligation. She had many questions and they were important, certainly, but this—the vast expanse of hauntingly uninhabited space before her, and what it still meant to Sasuke—was important too. She’d searched the village for him several times, Byakugan seeking and stretching, and she had yet to locate him. And yet, she had only just come to realize that she had unconsciously shied away from looking into _this—_

It was, somehow, equal parts typical and atypical of her. She was critically efficient in her work; detail-oriented and a perfectionist on the job. When she looked for someone or something, she didn’t miss checking her corners, didn’t skim the surface. She delved, far and deep, until she had what she needed. And yet, she had grown up professionally trained to be demure, elegant and genteel. It was both her nature and her upbringing.

Seamless efficiency. Unparalleled gentility. These were the lines she had been fighting between for so many weeks. As she fought, she hesitated; her matchless eyes ran up against the stark wood of the Uchiha Compound and froze. She didn’t look any further.

And she had only just realized it.

If pushed to recall, she was confident she could give a general layout of the compound from memory. But it would be flawed (so unlike her to leave it so) but this was the heart of her hesitation.

To look would be to intrude. This was the reigning thought that had kept her at bay for so long, with Sasuke in the wind. And yet—

Here she stood, at the gates. The veins around her eyes were relaxed, blood limit at bay. A single thought had prevented her from passing these gates, and yet the pressure of time passing had pushed her right to Sasuke’s doorstep. Vision accompanied by physical form, this time.

And what she was thinking now was…normally _totally_ unthinkable, for her. More than a step but a gulf past _rude_ , her thoughts were leaning towards outright offence. She glanced up at the crimson and the white, stark and still bleeding against the elegant wood of Sasuke’s compound. The symbol was fractured. She bit her lip, debating.

But enough time had been wasted. She needed answers.

She glanced around her quickly, and then she leapt over the wall. The wall itself, while immense, was no challenge. It was the meaning of her actions and the weight of where she stood that nearly made her knees buckle.

She could feel it in the air, stifling and immeasurable.

 _Loss_.

Even so long after the massacre had passed, still the air here retained the memory; cloying shadowed hands refusing to release the grip it had on the past. _Remember this infinite moment_ , it seemed to say, _do not forget what was done here._

Hinata honored the words by moving through the streets with her eyes facing forwards, touching nothing.

She didn’t know which house belonged to Sasuke. She didn’t even know if he still lived in the same house, or if he’d chosen one less saturated in loss, closer to the gate, the village, escape. She had jumped over the walls on impulse, tired and frustrated and jittery with nerves. If he was on a mission, then there was no reason for her to be here, looking. Interrupting the space here. The silence.

But something beyond the gates had called to her, a whisper of potential for the answers she sought.

She lost track of the houses around her. A careless eye would’ve thought the place untouched, a simple empty compound, houses still standing. Every door shut. Unsuspecting. Hinata’s eyes were not careless; she noticed the ash on the patio of a nearby home that had been scarred by flames. She caught the fractures of shattered windows tucked under weeping patio covers. Stairs broken through. Clipped wires hanging, aimless in a tired breeze.

She didn’t see any animals, but she could still hear them, the first signs of life. Vegetation was growing back, slowly but surely, and if she listened carefully enough she could hear the trickle of water somewhere in the distance. She followed it as best as she could, walking with eyes closed for a few paces. It brought her to a home that looked just like all the others, if slightly larger than those near the gate. Nothing about it really stood out, but the sound of the water—something about it— _changed_ the closer she got to it. That was enough of an oddity to draw her closer.

There was no real change she could put her finger on. She couldn’t explain it in words if she’d been asked. But there was something here that was _off_.

The steps were intact, though this veranda, too, had been touched by fire. Hinata allowed herself this: to run her hand over the wood as she ascended, step by step. Someone had tried to clean it away, haphazardly, poorly, a child’s work. For an instant, she thought of Sasuke, eyes too large for his face, on his knees scrubbing away at the ash his brother left behind. She shook the thought off a moment later, her heart heavy and lurching.

The stain had already sunken into the wood, permanent.

The door was open. That, she thought curiously, _did_ stand out. She approached it cautiously, fingertips on the doorframe, eyes trailing into the shadows.

She listened for the warbling water, different somehow—and suddenly it clicked.

Genjutsu.

She lifted her hands and called the blood to her periorbital veins, feeling them rise, her eyesight sharpen. Everything honed into minute detail, exposed unto her viewing, and she gazed at the tapestry of genjutsu placed so meticulously around this home. It had to be his, she thought, staring in wide-eyed wonder at the intricacy of the genjutsu he had placed in the rafters. She would have to be cautious of traps; Sasuke was not the careless sort.

His genjutsu was flawless, layered and seemingly unending. A few times Hinata felt herself become lost to it, following the stream, a glitch in the system. There was no running water in this place. It took her some time to work her way through it, until sweat beaded at her temples and her hands trembled, breath coming quicker over her lips. Finally, finally she found her way to the heart of it, felt the way her chakra mingled with his, and surrounded it.

With a muttered word and a _whoosh_ of expelled chakra, Sasuke’s childhood home became free to her exploration.

“Hello?” She called, and the softest tone of voice she had to offer still managed to shatter the air around her. Even as she startled, her heart beginning to race, she persisted. “Uchiha-san?”

She waited several moments, each heavier than the last, before moving completely into the front room. Out of respect, she toed off her sandals, lined them up off to the side. She wiped a bead of sweat away with the back of her hand. When she walked she made no sound; her wide eyes took in the room. It was brighter than she expected, the further she moved in. There were no pictures on the walls, no ornaments or decorations. Stark and spartan, as though it was unlived in.

But there was a blanket folded over the edge of a worn couch, and a house plant in the corner of the room that was recently watered. There were pots in the kitchen, and when Hinata reached the back of the house there was a familiar stone, rectangular and bowed with frequent use, sitting freely on the first step of an elegant veranda.

It was the same stone she had seen Sasuke sharpening his blade with not long ago, in that strange calm place, amidst the tall grass. A _safehouse_. Standing within his empty family home—a place of betrayal and loss—and sensing at least five traps around the perimeter (and undoubtedly missing many others), Hinata would never feel more starkly how out of place that word must’ve tasted on Sasuke’s lips.

It was sudden, the touch of something sharp against her throat. Steel, she thought dazedly, tensing.

“I’m home,” Sasuke said vacuously, just this side of sarcastic. He didn’t move the blade from her throat, though, so Hinata did not move. Her heart moved for her, quicker and quicker, attempting to flee. She stayed incredibly still, and when she unconsciously swallowed the blade edged into her skin just enough to sting. She could feel the heat of him, now, there behind her. Radiating. He’d been so quick that the warmth of him had had to catch up. This thought was a welcome but preposterous distraction. He was a conundrum and it was ridiculous, _ridiculous_ , but had Hinata not had his blade to her throat she might have allowed herself to lean back against him.

This thought more than anything else jarred her back into the present, enough so that she regained her composure and remembered why she was _here_. In his home.

She spoke against the blade. “Welcome home,” she said bashfully, with just the same tinged edge of irony in her tone. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

A moment of tension, before the blade fell away. She heard him sheathe it, a seamless slice, and when she turned she made sure to keep her chin held high. She was absolutely intruding, and somehow it felt so much more awful because it was _his_ home. But he’d been avoiding her for _weeks_ and she was tired of searching and waiting and being inactive.

She shouldn’t be here. She knew that.

More reason for her to ask her questions. The sooner she got her answers, the quicker she could leave.

Sasuke’s gaze was just another weapon, a blade pressed to her throat where the first had only just left. It wasn’t exactly anger, though there was something of disapproval, something of displeasure. He watched her sharply, pinned her in place, and somehow it was he who seemed vulnerable. She didn’t have to wonder why. She’d surprised him here in a place that maybe he’d learned to feel safe in. He didn’t have to fear her. She knew that wasn’t the point, but she hoped that he knew it—he didn’t have to fear her.

And was this place safe for him? She studied his eyes, the strong line of his tensed jaw. She wondered.

“I truly am sorry,” she said, not backing down even as she frowned. “But you’ve been avoiding me. I thought I could find you here.”

“And you have,” Sasuke agreed. He was completely closed off from her; the emotion she’d seen shifting in his eyes before had vanished. He had become shadows. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him like this. _Icy_. She allowed herself to take all of him in, casting her eyes over him in entirety, and realized he must’ve just returned from a mission. There were wrinkles in his clothes. Dirt and what looked like blood on his wrists. Lines of strain under his eyes.

Hinata frowned. “I have questions about the Mist poison.”

When Sasuke didn’t respond, she thought of how best to push forward without sounding overly accusing.

“You’ve been withholding information, Uchiha-san.”

Sasuke tilted his head, curiously cat-like. A predator with relaxed shoulders, unassuming. Hinata felt deliberately _tested_. It made her own shoulders tense, held tight with suspense. She crossed her arms over her chest to dispel her weakness, to give her something to hold onto. Still, her heart raced. Some quiet part of her felt bowed in, soft and worried for the vulnerability he had sealed away. That part of her wanted to forego the questions—important as they were—and reach out to him instead.

“Uchiha-san,” she began cautiously, “Do you have an antidote to this new Mist poison?”

Sasuke watched her silently for several empty moments, his eyes moving slowly over her face. She wondered what he read there, and how it made him feel about her. Did he feel anything about her—at all? _That isn’t relevant right now_ , she reminded herself.

When he moved, it was steady, easy. Still, it startled her into added watchfulness. He turned and toed off his sandals, and only gave hers a curious added look before moving around her, deeper into his home. He moved into the kitchen and Hinata followed warily, as quiet as she could be. She leaned against the doorframe and watched him prepare tea, her eyes catching on the way the fabric moved over his muscled back, his sculpted shoulders. Hinata felt heat rising up her throat. She licked her lips.

“I have an antidote,” Sasuke finally spoke, his voice fitting the solemn air. Hinata’s expression darkened, confused and bordering on suspicious. The latter leeched into her voice despite her best efforts to control it.

“Then why didn’t you share it with our superiors?” She demanded, moving a step closer, off the frame and into his kitchen space. Sasuke turned and rested his tailbone on the counter, the heels of his hands resting at his hips along the granite. He watched her carefully, and the intensity of his every look exposed her, unwound her. She felt thoroughly _explored_ , and her heart raced with every new breath she drew in under his study.

“Naruto knows,” he said at last, tilting his head to watch her reaction to that information. He wouldn’t be disappointed with lack of reaction; Hinata felt herself react expressively, eyebrows jumping, lips parting.

“He knows?” She said, almost to herself. Her frown was going to carve permanence into her expression if she kept this up, but that was the least of her worries. “Then why wouldn’t he share it with Tsunade-sama and Sakura-san? Our medics? Why hasn’t he—”

Sasuke’s expression fractured, let slip another fragment of vulnerability, this time in a particular shade of disquiet. It was a strange expression to see on his face, a blended mix of anger and apprehension, something he clearly felt troubled with.

“It isn’t safe,” he admitted at last, watching her reaction from under his eyelashes, almost worriedly. Hinata wondered if every answer he had for her today was going to shock her anew.

“It’s not,” she hesitated, eyes flickering over his features, “Safe?”

Sasuke didn’t deem to repeat himself, but he did offer her a single shake of his head to solidify the fact. He watched her for a moment and misinterpreted something of her expression.

“It works,” he explained almost hastily, “But it’s not guaranteed to be safe. I’ve been studying the poison for months, and without the antidote, you would’ve died. There’s no question about that. I had to give you the antidote.”

“Oh,” Hinata agreed, shaking her head, a little overwhelmed. “Of course, yes. I understand. I suppose I—should’ve been more concerned about that fact, but I’m actually more concerned with why you haven’t explained this to our medics. If you don’t understand how the antidote works, then you should’ve immediately taken it to someone who _could_.”

The corner of Sasuke’s lips quirked, a smile, and Hinata realized he was laughing at her scolding him. Heat filled her cheeks even as she couldn’t help but to reflect his humor with a smile of her own, if only for a moment.

Sasuke chided her, saying, “You really should care more for your own well-being, Hinata.”

She nodded, this argument a constant among her inner circle. “Yes, yes,” she said, nearly sighing. He studied her reaction with open curiosity, tilting his head again. He had a mean jawline, that somehow further emphasized how beautiful he was. “We have more pressing matters to attend to, Uchiha-san. A potentially dangerous antidote. We know it works, and every poison has a cure.”

There was an added light to his gaze, though, something of humor that she caught just a moment before it dithered out.

“It’s not that simple.”

Hinata huffed. “It’s not?”

“The poison isn’t simple poison,” Sasuke explained, as the tea began to bubble. “It’s inlaid with jutsu.”

Hinata was stunned into silence, having never even considered. Poison with jutsu embedded within? If Sasuke was right and the poison had been concocted with jutsu as a component—what kind of jutsu, she wondered—then a simple antidote was out of the question. Which led to another question: how had Sasuke come up with an antidote, however temporary, that was efficient enough to work at least for the time being?

Hinata slowed her thoughts and took a deep breath. One step at a time.

“How do you know there’s jutsu within the formula?”

Sasuke’s eyes traced her lips for a single, breathtaking moment before his eyes bled red. Hinata tensed, an instant and unconscious reaction. Sasuke met her eyes with purpose. _The Sharingan._

“I told you that I’ve been investigating this poison for months. Once I realized there was jutsu within it, I collected it for study. I brought it to Naruto. Kakashi and I have been trying to decipher it since.”

Hinata swallowed, and realized suddenly that there was fear in her. This poison—this _justu_ —it had been in her system. It could still be within her.

“And your progress?”

Sasuke’s eyes faded out to their depthless black, and his eyelashes fell heavily. An edge returned to him, though Hinata couldn’t distinguish its origin.

“Dismal.”

Hinata studied him for a moment, watchful for that anger, wondering at it. There were so many holes in his explanation she didn’t even know where to start. There were an endless number of possibilities that could be the cause of his ire.

“How did you first discover there was jutsu in the poison?”

Hinata knew she had asked just the right question for the heart of her confusion when Sasuke glanced up at her and his gaze _cut_. It took him several moments of trying to find the words, through which she waited patiently, studying him all the while. The tea kettle whistled and Sasuke took the time to turn from her, to prepare two cups. He poured them with a steady hand, and set the kettle down softly. When he turned back to her he met her eyes squarely, and carried her cup to her across the kitchen. He did not look away.

Her fingers touched his around the porcelain and he said, “My brother discovered it.”

Hinata nearly dropped the cup. Her eyes flew to his immediately, and he did not shy away from the question and the suspicion there. He met her head on, as brave as she’d seen him. There was a strength to this kind of honesty, refusing to back down even when he knew how she’d respond to the information. She wanted to step closer to him, even as her mind raced around what that answer could actually, possibly even _mean_.

“Your _brother_.” She swallowed heavily, shaking her head. He could’ve told her any number of ways for deciphering the poison’s hidden contents and she would’ve considered them. But claiming that Uchiha Itachi, Sasuke’s traitorous older brother who had murdered his entire clan save for Sasuke himself, was the person who had not only discovered the jutsu but had for some reason shared that information with Sasuke, _never_ would’ve touched the same plane of existence as Hinata. Not in a lifetime. And _yet_.

“He is notoriously elusive,” Sasuke went on easily, impassively, suddenly and sharply vulnerable, like a knife wound. “Except the rare moments when he doesn’t want to be.”

“He told you this?” At his nod, she asked, “How can we possibly trust him?”

Sasuke clenched his jaw, the only noticeable tell of his subdued fury. It was the most noticeable reaction Hinata had seen from him yet. Only Itachi could fracture Sasuke with such ease.

“We can’t,” he said gruffly. “But it would be _stupid_ not to believe him.”

“What?” Hinata tried to wrap her mind around his contradictions, but found herself only blinking at him, waiting for further explanation. She lifted her tea to her lips, nearly forgotten in her hands, and sipped lightly. It was delicious.

Sasuke sighed and ducked his head, as if to say _I don’t know how to explain this to you_. Still, though, he tried. He looked back up to her and said, “Itachi wants me to become strong enough to kill him. Though he would expect me to be somehow clever and cunning enough to avoid being exposed to a poison like this, he must also know how lethal it is because he was the one who sought _me_ out to explain it. He wouldn’t do something like that just to screw with me. He’s fucked up, but not like that.”

Hinata let him chew on those words for a moment, the silence growing between them. There wasn’t anything in this house that could offer noise outside of their voices, their movements. No breeze, no decorations, no life outside of theirs. It was eerie, but strangely enough, Hinata was fast growing comfortable with it. It didn’t unsettle her quite as much as it had when she’d first arrived, and maybe it was because the idea that Uchiha Itachi would actually help his brother like this was far, far more unsettling.

Sasuke gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw working hard. “It pisses me off, but I think he was trying to help me.”

Hinata didn’t want to repeat herself and say, _how could we ever trust him_? There was so much between Itachi and Sasuke that she would never, ever understand, even if she tried. If Sasuke, who hated Itachi more than anyone and anything in existence truly believed that Itachi was right about this, then how could she fight it? She would remain cautious, of course, she wasn’t a fool. But that antidote had saved her life. The information Sasuke had gotten from Itachi had inadvertently saved her life.

“The antidote,” Hinata remembered, suddenly. “How did you come across it? Did—did your brother give it to you, as well?”

Sasuke’s eyes were answer enough, even before he said, “He created it.”

Hinata’s eyes widened, and Sasuke glanced aside, looking through the glass doors to his back patio. “There are chakra patterns woven into the antidote.”

A poison with jutsu in the mix. An antidote with chakra interspersed. What kind of mess had they landed themselves into?

Sasuke turned back to her and watcher her quietly, from under his eyelashes. There was a pain to him, an overlying sadness that seemed to last. He said, “Only our eyes can see it.”

Hinata had more questions, but she skipped past them instead to ask the most important one that came to her mind following that revelation.

She lifted her chin high and asked, “Why was I not consulted, then, to study the antidote?”

Was that a ghost of a smile on his face?

“That was my first thought as well, initially. But this is…an untrusted antidote. And you have been exposed to it.”

She let that sink in for several long moments of silence, through which he did not back down from her critical stare. “Oh,” she said at last, touchy with the understanding of what he wasn’t saying. She said it for him.

“I’m not trustworthy,” she said, “Because I’ve been exposed to the antidote Itachi crafted?”

Sasuke’s chin dipped once, and Hinata mirrored the gesture.

“Who has taken my place?”

Sasuke blinked, a hesitation. “Hyuuga Hanabi.”

Hinata’s heart lurched, not with betrayal but with a lesser pain. She understood, then, even without explanation that her sister had been ordered to secrecy. Still, it would’ve been one answer Hinata could’ve had, amidst the multitude of questions still plaguing her.

“You are still actively studying the antidote,” she stated, gauging his expression for any changes. He nodded his head, not shying away from her in the slightest.

“I was not exposed to the poison.”

“But you’ve been studying it for months,” Hinata started slowly, trying to understand how he could’ve possibly avoided exposure. He was fast, sure, but fast and efficient enough to avoid any and all exposure while actively investigating the poison in question?

“Yes,” he agreed, and when he saw her expression still poised in disbelief, he added, “I’m…cautious.”

Hinata heard cautious and thought _paranoid_ , but could she really blame him? Trust was something Itachi had taken from Sasuke long ago.

Sasuke blinked. “And then there was the antidote.”

 _Uchiha Itachi_.

Hinata flinched at Sasuke's obvious refusal to say his brother’s name, let alone mention him at all. It was a pointed kind of avoidance from a man that she had come to know as someone who never backed down from anything. An open wound.

“Ah,” Hinata sighed, the weight of the situation growing heavier and heavier upon her shoulders. Now she not only had been exposed to some new lethal Mist poison, which had some mysterious jutsu within it, but she’d also been exposed to an antidote that Uchiha Itachi had concocted himself. With chakra in it. She couldn’t help but to wonder how she was even still alive.

“How could he have come up with an antidote? And how did he get chakra to remain within it?”

Sasuke’s expression was stormy, clouded over and barbed. “I don’t know. It’s entirely possible that he figured it out himself and concocted the antidote. If it’s a genjutsu, it’s not like one I’ve ever seen before. And I don’t know what use an antidote with genjutsu would serve.”

Hinata felt the stark chill of fear race down her spine. She had never considered jutsu and chakra the way she was now, as something so easily manipulated. Sure, she worked with chakra every day and manipulated it almost casually to do incredible things, but to use it like a recipe? An ingredient? With possible dormant effects? It was…anomalous of what had been done in the past. No one had ever used chakra and jutsu like this before, at least as far as Hinata knew of. She’d have to brush up on her history, and was already wondering when she could slip into the local library. Maybe she could convince Sakura to go with her.

“Hypothetically, if he could weave genjutsu into an antidote and people imbibed it…do you think it’s possible he could alter our reality like that? How long can he maintain a genjutsu?” Hinata’s thoughts raced, and her words came just as quickly. “Does that mean he’s close? How far away can he be from the source and still retain the chakra within?”

If more Konoha citizens than just Hinata had been affected by the poison and received Itachi’s antidote, they could very well have a village-wide security emergency on their hands. Hinata’s eyes shot up to Sasuke’s and the severity of his expression only heightened her fear.

“Itachi,” Sasuke said through gritted teeth, one hand fisting at his side. “Has always been a genius. He still retains the title of youngest appointed Konoha ANBU Captain. Appropriately so. He has always had better chakra control, more power, and is quicker than you can imagine.”

Sasuke hesitated, and every word was a new foe he had to fight alone. Hinata watched the struggle behind his eyes, the way they clashed, caught the shadows and held.

“Even as a boy, he played an astounding yet masterful hand in mind games.”

Hinata felt the curious sensation of having the wind knocked out of her without ever having taken an actual hit. “We have to tell—”

“The bastard already knows.”

Hinata’s eyebrows jumped, surprised. “You told him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he advise?”

Sasuke’s jaw tensed, released.

“That anyone exposed is untrustworthy,” he said honestly, watching her carefully. “Until we can decipher the hidden chakra in the antidote, as well as the jutsu in the poison.”

Hinata swallowed, her lips opening though no words came. She struggled a few more times, breaking eye contact to glance around his kitchen, unable to continue to meet his searching gaze. And here she was, breaking into his home. Did he think that her presence here was Itachi's doing? That she had been controlled, somehow--that she was being controlled even now? 

...Was she?

She had not even considered—untrustworthy—the tower of deceit that had built around her since she’d returned from that mission so many months ago. Secrets in every corner, more than she had ever, ever expected. Hanabi, Naruto, and Sasuke, too. Who else was keeping secrets from her? How many people had been ordered to do so?

Hinata understood duty. She understood the need to keep secrets to keep people safe. And though it was never fun to be the person those secrets were kept from, she understood the necessity.

That didn’t make it any easier. She felt hurt, and ashamed. A simple mistake had led her to all of this. Had she just been quicker, sharper, paid closer attention—she could’ve evaded the poison. She could’ve made it home without ever having to experience any of this deceit. Instead, she’d been careless. In fact, she’d made a series of careless mistakes, one after another since the poison had entered her system. And now she was a walking time bomb with an unknown detonation time. Her friends and her family both were keeping secrets from her. Her own body was keeping secrets of her—holding onto the potential of a genjutsu that could alter her very reality.

Was this, then, the source of Sasuke's looks across the market all those weeks before? His presence in the Tower, so well-timed and in line with her own, pointed and planned?

Not interest, but suspicion?

She was _hurt_. But she would not let this break her. She was stronger than they knew, and she would not bend to the will of men who attempted to control her through the chemistry of her body, and the ways they may have altered it with their insidious concoctions. She was going to overcome this, even in the dark where she’d been cast, and she was going to _win_.

“I understand,” she whispered, honesty exposing her in a fine tremble. She looked back up to Sasuke with steel in her stare, chin lifted. “Still, I want to help in any way that I can. I’m going to do some research. You all can…do with them what you will.” To what extent did they mistrust her? Would she be given another mission, or would she be held prisoner inside the walls of Konoha until her autonomy was cleared? Hinata pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. They were dark and drawing and she had other more prevalent questions to ask, now.

“Okay,” Sasuke said, just like that. Hinata felt the briefest moment of relief, a respite in Sasuke’s unspoken promise to accept her work in this case. He might not be able to trust it, but accepting her efforts at all was a start. It was then that she remembered—Sasuke, returned to Konoha as a (forgiven) village traitor, knew what it was to be cast aside, and what it meant to have people there to accept his efforts. His team had welcomed him warmly, protectively, and promised to help him hunt down his brother _together_. Sasuke had learned and grown much from their support, and she had seen it in small ways, over the years. His simple kindnesses.

“Okay,” she sighed. “So it’s highly possible that Itachi made the antidote. It might also be possible that he got it from the Mist swordsman he travels with, though, right? Or at least got help from him?”

Sasuke didn’t look surprised at the trail her thoughts had taken, only nodded, crossing his arms over his chest in contemplation.

“It’s a fair assumption,” he said, “But Itachi wouldn’t take credit from someone else. It would be beneath him to do so, and he’d never have reason to.” Sasuke scowled. “He’d figure it out himself before ever plagiarizing someone else’s work.”

Hinata thought instantly of the legend Sasuke’s brother had left behind in the village hidden in the leaves, a trail of achievements each more impressive than the last, until he decimated them with an unthinkable atrocity. He had always been a genius, even as a very young boy, so it was entirely possible that he’d managed to figure the poison out and configure an antidote all on his own. Hinata didn’t know how much weight to give him, having never known him personally. It was likely that he’d gotten the antidote from his Mist companion, though that made the antidote feel even less trustworthy, somehow.

Itachi or a legendary Mist swordsman. Neither were trustworthy.

Hinata felt a headache forming, and reached up to rub idly at her temples. Sasuke dipped his chin at her tea, encouraging, and she smiled in gratitude as she lifted the cup to her lips. Sasuke had yet to drink any of his, she noticed. It might even have grown cold, sitting there untouched by the sink.

“Okay,” Hinata breathed again, trying to push away the tension and the confusion and everything that felt so heavy upon her. She had more questions to ask of him, but they seemed trivial and out of reach, now that Sasuke had shed so much light on the secrets he’d been keeping about the poison and the antidote. And about who all was keeping secrets from her.

Still, she wanted to know about the looks in the marketplace, what their true origin was; the way he seemed to open up to her in ways he did with no one else—but maybe that was falsity, too. Maybe he was just keeping a close eye on her, for the sake of this mission. For the sake of being able to better his brother, even. 

Now wasn’t the time to ask those questions. She had to sit down alone and consider the possibilities of this investigation and what her part would be in it, if she were allowed one at all, since having been compromised. And even if his interest _was_ genuine--which she had never doubted more than now--then how could the possibility of him maybe, possibly being a little interested in her even measure up to the enormity of what this poison situation held for their village? For her?

Hinata felt herself backing down before she could second-guess herself. It would have to be another time. Hopefully he would be easier to find and she wouldn’t have to break into his home again, she thought wryly.

“I came here with so many questions, thinking I’d get them answered and leave quickly. Instead I only have more questions, decidedly less answers than I expected, and I have overstayed my—well, I was never quite welcome, was I?”

Hinata offered Sasuke a wry smile, tired and ashamed. She felt heat in her cheeks, a side effect of the shame at her intrusion. The burden of her earlier decision was finally weighing fully on her, coupled with the new weight of not knowing where she stood in this investigation. The weight bowed her shoulders and she was reminded of how brash and rude she had acted—and so impulsively! It was absolutely unlike her, and yet, here she was. Still standing in his home, after having essentially broken in. He’d even poured her tea.

She set her cup down on the edge of the table. Doubly shamed after remembering her impulsive actions, she took a step back towards the front room. The way Sasuke watched her made it feel like she was fleeing. He gazed at her and she felt her heart in her throat, thump, thump, thumping.

“Again,” she offered, quietly, “I apologize for intruding. For invading your privacy and—I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have acted so impulsively.”

Sasuke tilted his head, and for the first time, he smiled. Hinata’s heart was ever prominent in her awareness, suddenly light in her chest, hummingbird’s wings. Something about his expression spoke of a promise, and Hinata felt herself go breathless with the possibilities.

“Ah,” he said, as she took another step towards the front door. “I understand.”

 _I understand_ , he’d said, and something about it almost sounded playful. Hinata was at a loss for words and had no idea what he could possibly be planning, after this, so instead of asking further she turned on her heel and stepped onto his porch. She took a deep breath and a single step before hesitating, remembering the open door she’d found upon arrival. She turned and found Sasuke approaching, eyes still bright with some unknown humor.

Hinata gestured awkwardly to the door, as if to say, _open? Closed? Which?_

Sasuke’s expression gentled in a way that was as enticing as it was dangerous. Hinata felt drawn in, even as she knew that she was supposed to leave. That she _had_ to leave. She needed air, and space, and time to think. To sort out the answers she had gotten, and the new questions she had. About the poison, the antidote, herself, and about one Uchiha Sasuke, too.

“Open door policy,” he said casually, in a way that placed more meaning on the words than Hinata thought he’d intended. He would soon prove otherwise, however.

Hinata marveled over those words the entire walk out of the compound, and kept coming back to the expression on his face when she’d first turned to see him in his own home. Every door in the Uchiha compound had been shut, possibly sealed and locked, except for his. Why was that?

She thought of Sasuke being an academy student again, studying to become a genin, learning about throwing stars and substitution jutsu; of him coming home to find his family every day, cheery and excited to impress; of his mother making him home-cooked meals, the smells of which were a comfort and a respite wafting through his home; of his brother waiting in the forest, prepared to help him learn how to exhale flame; of Sasuke coming home to Itachi standing over the corpses of his parents, blood on his hands.

Maybe that was why it didn’t matter to him, now. What good was a door?

When the nightmare had lived inside of it all along.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Over the next few days, Hinata did a lot of thinking; about friends, about siblings, about poison.

She felt uncomfortable in her own skin, in a way that was not new, but was _different_. She’d developed curves earlier than many of her peers, hiding them beneath jackets and loose pants out of insecurity and comfort. It had taken her years to grow comfortable enough to stop looking at her feet when she walked, and instead to raise her head high. To be proud to be alive.

It was not new, but it was different, knowing that there might be something insidious under her skin. A poison, laced with jutsu—a lethal possibility lying dormant in the streams of her veins. She rubbed at her arms, glancing away from the hairs raising along her skin to the distant plumes of chimney smoke outside her window. The sun continued to set, hovering over the mountains, casting the sky in fine shades of lilac and rose.

She thought of her friends, and wondered how many of them knew that she was suspect. Naruto and Sasuke, of course. She couldn’t imagine this kind of information being the kind Naruto would spread, not with Shikamaru’s guidance as his advisor. Shikamaru too, then. Hatake Kakashi was a constant presence in Naruto’s life, so he was an option as well. And Hanabi, her little sister, who had been consulted in her stead as the necessary Hyuuga eyes to consider the case.

With some relief, she doubted that her team knew anything about it, even if they were the first line of reconnaissance on these missions.

It was a tight circle, she thought, with her at the center. How many other people had been exposed to the toxin? Was she the only one? The outlier? She didn’t judge them for suspecting her—this poison was a beast none of them had ever encountered before, an unthinkable but genuine cause for concern. Chakra weaved into a chemical, dormant within her body.

Sasuke had given her the cure, but was it really a cure at all? Hinata remembered the way his eyes had flashed when he’d mentioned his brother, crimson bathed in shadows, the Sharingan so close to activating out of simple, unbridled vehemence.

Uchiha Itachi: the promised one; the rising star of the Uchiha, who ultimately cast them into eternal darkness. Sasuke’s own blood. The supposed creator of the antidote that had saved her life, and may still run through her veins. No matter how she thought about it, there was no way to trust him, but no way to discount him from the equation, either. If he was truly the creator of the antidote, then they needed him. They needed his knowledge or his information, and the only way they were going to get either of those things was from Sasuke. 

Sasuke, who would sooner slip a blade across Itachi’s throat then allow him a word of explanation. Would he succeed before they fully understood what it was he’d given to her, in order to save her life? Though she was frightened, she couldn’t blame him, either. He had been sincere in trying to save her, of that she was certain. But what had gone through his mind when he’d pulled her against him, slid the needle under her skin? If what he’d told her was true, then Itachi had given him the antidote not long before he’d needed to use it—on her. Had he even had a chance to test it? Had he studied it, or had he pushed it as far from his present mind as possible, knowing it tainted, knowing that it had come from the person he hated most?

Had he stopped to wonder about the consequences of giving it to her? Or had he acted out of necessity, a kind of panic, with her weight against him, breath choking off in her throat, skin losing color to the acidity rising in her blood?

She would never know, unless she asked. And that was maddening, too. How could she bottle all of this up into concise questions? It was a whirlwind in her head, ruffling her thoughts, keeping her up late into the evening. She tucked her knees against her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs. She felt the coolness of the evening air, and closed her eyes. She pictured the Uchiha compound that she knew, emptied out and ashen. She tried to compare it to the one she’d never paid much attention to; when it was full of life and color, voices and laughter. She’d been too consumed with her own life in a clan, her infatuation with Naruto, her desire to be noticed.

She remembered walking past those giant gates, at the time so incredibly intimidating in their height. She remembered glancing in and seeing constant movement; the flicker of long, elegant sleeves; the quiet chatter of compound gossip; the whip of flags with Uchiha crests fluttering in the wind. She remembered a great many beautiful people, hard-working and stoic, moving through life with gentle eyes, heavy and content. She remembered the sound of the gates shutting in front of her, a heavy connection of gears and locks. Dust kicking up from the might of their movement.

She opened her eyes, blinking slowly, and tried not to remember.

Her heart hurt.

She fixed her attention instead to the way she could feel her pulse in her throat, fluttering away, slow and easy. She felt healthy. Yet, she found herself wondering about Sasuke’s brother, shrouded in mystery, his mind an inaccessible oasis of knowledge. What was the scope of Itachi’s ability? What kind of history did he have with antidotes, that allowed him the proficiency to make one such as this? It must’ve been prepared quickly, too. Mist wasn’t the kind of place to keep something like this off the battlefield for long. They would’ve been all too happy to lace their weapons with it just to add some flare to their techniques. And Konoha would’ve known about it.

She thought of Itachi’s Akatsuki partner, impossibly tall and barbed. His sword, taller still. Had he helped Itachi formulate it? Did he have insider knowledge of what Mist was working on, even though he had been cast out years ago?

Or, Hinata thought with sudden apprehension, was he the true source? Of the poison and the antidote, both. It would’ve been easy, then, Hinata thought. Who better to formulate an antidote so swiftly after a lethal poison arises, than the original creator? Or creators? But then, _why_? Why make the poison only to make an antidote? Why give the antidote to Sasuke, of all people, when Itachi knew he wanted him dead?

She could think of two immediate reasons. The first was as absurd as it was genuinely plausible: Itachi wanted to keep Sasuke safe. If there was a vile poison radiating from Mist, and he knew the current disquiet between Leaf and Mist, it was reasonable to assume Sasuke would encounter the poison sooner rather than later. Hinata thought on this with trepidation, frown lines forming, lips pursing.

The only other reason her tired mind could come up with was far more sinister, but far less probable. She didn’t know much about Uchiha Itachi, besides what the rest of the village knew, and the few memories that team 7 had let slip to her in moments of vulnerability. Sasuke rarely, if ever, spoke of his brother. From what she knew of him, which was next to nothing, she imagined Itachi was someone who always had a plan, for every occasion. She couldn’t imagine someone getting the upper hand on him easily; he would be prepared. He seemed brilliant, lethal, and unaffected. As rumors had it, he was willing to do anything, _anything_ , to further his potential.

But that wasn’t enough. She needed to know more about him to better understand this poison, this _cure_. She had to understand the way he thought and the way he _was_ , to study him from the ground up. If she wanted to get out of this with her health and will intact, she had to know him.

And only Sasuke had the answers she required.

The question then, was if he’d give them to her.

She thought of those massive Uchiha gates, sealed shut with near-permanence, and doubt crept into her psyche.

 

✧

 

“What do you think?” Hinata asked, sliding the chair beside Nara Shikamaru out near-silently. It was early morning, and the central library was quiet save for the chirping of birds outside, and the occasional _fwip_ of a turned page. Shikamaru’s eyes trailed lazily over the text he was reading, from a tome that looked to weigh more than the chair he sat upon.

“I think it’s troublesome,” he said with a wry grin, turning to her.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” she said sincerely, facing him squarely. “But when I think of a genius, I think of you. If I’m going to understand _him_ , then I thought I should start with someone who might think like him.”

Shikamaru grimaced, discomfited with the comparison. He rubbed at the corner of his jaw with the backs of his knuckles, glancing away from her. When he turned back, he cast a side-long glance at her, already weary.

He said, “I used to play Shogi with him.”

Hinata blinked, sitting up straighter. With utmost attention, she said, “Explain.”

Shikamaru sighed, shoulders sagging as if she’d asked him for the world, something heavy and impossible and tiresome that he definitely didn’t have the energy for. But when he met her eyes again, he abided. And Hinata listened, on the edge of her seat, as Shikamaru explained.

“Before the Academy, when I was just a kid, I’d play Shogi in the park during break sometimes. I’d play myself, on both sides. My dad was my usual opponent, but he obviously wasn’t there during school hours. None of the other kids were interested in playing, and the few who tried were just no challenge for me at all. A total drag. So I’d play myself, to make it interesting.”

Hinata’s lips quirked, but Shikamaru only sighed again, running a hand over the top of his head, the slick hair tied back.

“I think I was eight at the time. I was in the park, playing by myself, seat across from me empty as usual. And then it wasn’t. I looked up and he was sitting there, staring down at the board. I knew the emblem on his shirt. He asked me if he could play.”

Hinata’s smile was reserved, her words gentle. “He won, didn’t he?”

Shikamaru nodded, rubbing at his chin.

“Yeah, he won. That would’ve been interesting enough. But it got lost for me in the way that he _played_. Not even my old man was that patient, or that quick. I was just a little kid, but he was too. He didn’t think like one, though. Not even then. He played like…like a General.”

Shikamaru looked up at her, then, and she saw a kind of awe in his expression.

“It was easy, for him,” Shikamaru said lowly, eyes flickering. “War.”

_Oh_ , Hinata thought, sitting back in her seat as Shikamaru fell into thoughtful silence. _Oh, this isn’t good._

Hinata didn’t know what else to say. She’d had questions on her tongue, but they fell to the wayside as her thoughts culminated around the word _General_. Itachi had probably just barely entered his teenage years. She studied the lines of Shikamaru’s face, remembered the awe carved around his wry lips, the way his eyes shifted focus in thought, and realized that she was in over her head. If Shikamaru couldn’t fathom the way Itachi’s mind worked, if he truly recognized the potential and reality of a war General’s mind in Itachi at such a young age, then what kind of acuity was Hinata dealing with _now_?

This would all be so, so much easier if she was allowed to examine the chemical properties of the poison and antidote themselves, rather than be kept on the outskirts. If she could just see—just get to _study_ the chakra infused within, maybe she could make some serious headway. Maybe then she could sleep better at night, understanding at least a little about what crawled within her, just enough to rest her mind.

Again, she reminded herself, she understood the basis of their suspicion, but she was a Hyuuga and they were dealing with a Genjutsu master. Genjutsu; Illusions made entirely from chakra; Hinata was the _most_ qualified— 

Hyuuga. Their infamous bloodline limit—the Byakugan. How could someone _without_ it ever infuse chakra within a chemical substance that enabled the jutsu within to be both capable and lasting? Hinata’s thoughts raced, as if this discovery—one of a _true_ deception; one, potentially, of her own _blood—_ was not horrifying enough. What kind of chakra control would it take to be able to do something like this? If the chakra was still active, the chemicals still present in her bloodstream, and the jutsu somehow still able to be manipulated, then that opened a whole new world of questions. What range were they working with? What quantity of antidote had been spread? They could have mass warfare on their hands and not even know it.

And the culprit could be living within their own walls. A _Hyuuga_. She refused to believe it—Sharingan users could see chakra, too, but—

But not like a Hyuuga could. The Byakugan saw chakra in perfect, unerring clarity. It would be an invaluable asset to a team looking to make chemicals of mass destruction, or—control. Hinata shook with the anger of it, the startled upset tearing at her insides. The pieces fit, but she refused, _refused_ to see it through. She wouldn’t believe it based solely on her own halfhearted conjecture. Her family, not a single member of her family, would do something like this. Especially since it probably meant working with Uchiha Itachi. Unless…traitors could stick together.

_No_ , Hinata thought harshly.

Had Hanabi followed these same trains of thought, explained them to Naruto? Did they know? She couldn’t assume that they did, regardless of how clever her sister was. She had to make certain.

Hinata shot to her feet at the thought, took a single flashing step towards her window, and froze.

But would they even believe her?

To be compromised was to be wholly untrusted. If she went to them with this alien chakra in her veins, spouting about potential mass warfare and a deeper, more subversive betrayal from her own blood; what would they think of her? What would be done with her? Would they send her away? Lock her up? Would they even hear her at all, or would the words simply turn over stones of already laid suspicion, effectively damning her?

She may feel totally and completely involved in this case, given she was the only one who’d been exposed to both substances—the only one that she knew of—but she had to remember that because of the possibility of having been compromised, she was not actually an active part of the investigation.

There was a reason she studied general potions, poisons, and antidotes rather than being allowed in the lab to work on extracting from the actual thing. She was working with nothing concrete, only conjecture based off what she could learn from the basics. She did, however, pick up several tomes on the intricacies of chakra and the many ways that it could be manipulated. _That_ , she found, was an extensive and highly detailed read.

She turned to Shikamaru again, eyes casting over him, her shoulders heavy with the weight of it all. She wanted to ask him if he had even thought to suggest her as the Hyuuga specialist, or if he had been the one to talk Naruto down from suggesting her. Or, she thought with a diluted kind of sadness, if neither of those things had occurred at all. If she had instantly and unanimously been excluded from the investigation. Some part of her, curious and evolving, wanted to ask. But she wouldn’t.

Hanabi was an excellent choice—if not the best choice. But she was a busy woman, too, still learning and growing. Hinata hoped this investigation didn’t take too much away from her; hoped that she, at least, was getting sleep at night.

She tried to brush off the feeling of uselessness, the weight of it bearing down on her, and leaned forward slightly to recapture Shikamaru’s attention. She would not back down from this, not when it threatened her so actively, not with the promise of Mist using more of this poison and the undoubted following of Leaf needing the antidote. Her friends were in danger, and for the first time since discovering the shady origins of the antidote, she felt relieved that she was the only one who had been exposed thus far. At least, that she knew of.

“I need to understand him better, Shikamaru-san.” She was as earnest as she was insistent, drawing him back in with the promise of a new challenge. She had come into this meeting assuming that Shikamaru knew about the poison, being Naruto’s right hand and all. She was proved correct when she began to describe it and found no trace of surprise in his reaction. He simply nodded, exhausted and waning under the bright halogen lights overhead. They emphasized the bags under his eyes, growing ever bigger by the day. Hinata felt sympathy for him, wanted to reach out and clasp a hand to his shoulder.

But now was not the time for simple comforts.

“I need your help,” she implored, stern as an heiress was raised to be. “If I can understand the way he thinks, I think I’ll be able to understand his purpose at least, in giving Sasuke the antidote.”

“It’s obvious why he gave it to him,” Shikamaru interjected, not arrogantly but with slight exasperation. “His motivations have always been concise, right to the point. He wants Sasuke alive, so Sasuke is alive. He wanted to win, so he won. It’s the _how_ of it that needs our focus.”

Hinata didn’t mind the unintended harshness of Shikamaru’s response; she focused instead on how unquestioning he made Itachi’s power seem to be. The way he explained it made it seem like there was no trying, for Itachi. Only succeeding. She wondered over that, before her ears caught onto something else in Shikamaru’s explanation. He’d included himself in the process. Not her focus, but _theirs_. The more brain power she had on her side, the quicker she could dispel whatever was in the antidote, and protect her friends from encountering the same skin-crawling feeling of doom that she’d felt every night since having been saved. She was pleased to have his full attention on the matter.

“So let’s focus on how,” She agreed, turning to the satchel she’d thrown over her chair. She withdrew three scrolls, previously bare of ink, now covered in hand-drawn diagrams and laid them out in front of them on the table. Shikamaru’s eyes lit up, instantly tracing over them, his hands already reaching for them. She studied them over his hand, though she knew them by heart now. She’d spent the last few sleepless nights drawing them up, after all.

“These are good,” Shikamaru praised, dragging a finger over the detailed notation of the properties of Genjutsu, versus the chemical composition of poisons. It was an untested field, poisons with jutsu in them, so she’d had to come up with a lot on her own.

She was up against Uchiha Itachi, presumably. Master of Genjutsu. Uchiha Genius.

Her eyes flashed. She herself had quite an understanding of Genjutsu, too.

She leaned forward and gestured to a dodecagon geometric of hair-thin chakra infused within several layers of poison ingredients. “I’ve been wondering about the control needed to infuse chakra this fine into something as liquid and infinitesimal as a chemical composition. The structure would have to be as sturdy as it is fine. Yet, flexible? I started with a triangle.”

“Triangles are the strongest geometric shape in existence,” Shikamaru agreed. “They can offer movement as well. Dexterity. Creativity.”

“I don’t know how to calculate it. I barely understand it as is.” Hinata admitted, cheeks flushing with the faintest embarrassment. Shikamaru merely shook his head, his pointer finger running across the far side of the shape, the separated layers.

“Let me study this,” Shikamaru offered, eyes glancing up to Hinata with an added lightness in them. “This is good so far, Hinata.”

She smiled, sitting back slightly. “It’s a start.”

Shikamaru nodded, determination striping his face in lines of preeminent exhaustion.

“It’s a start.”

 

✧

 

Days later, with her head crammed in-between pages about chakra control, a voice spoke over her.

“You need to take a break.”

Hinata glanced up, eyes bleary, and had to blink several times to clear them enough to see Kiba without a haze. He frowned, disapproving.

“You look like hell, Hinata.” He crossed his arms, sniffing. “We just got back from our mission this morning and you’ve been here all day.”

“You’re exhausting yourself,” Kurenai gently re-worded, laying one hand over Hinata’s until she had to put her pen down, let her hand and wrist rest. She’d been working nearly nonstop on trying to decipher the formulation of the poison without being able to examine the poison itself, so that she could start working on antidotes so she could understand _this_ antidote, so that she could start working on a true and harmless cure for _both_ , while also taking missions and awaiting Shikamaru’s calls so he could offer more insight than she ever could. He’d been invaluable so far, shutting down the theories she’d contrived that didn’t have ground in reality, and encouraging further study on those that just might. She spent more of her time in the library than she did at home, and it had been ages since she’d slept peacefully through the night.

She knew how she looked, though she’d taken to avoiding mirrors of late. The lines on her face were grave, emphasizing her struggle. Her eyes were heavy with exhaustion, her body aching from sitting in one position for too long. She still had so many questions. She felt like she still had no answers, even though she and Shikamaru had made what they thought to be _some_ progress.

But Shikamaru wasn’t always available to her. He was the Hokage’s assistant, his strategist, and her condition wasn’t the most important item on Konoha’s list. It was up there, but not at the top.

Hinata glanced up at her teacher and her friend, and she tried to offer them a smile that wasn’t forced. It faltered. Her temples pounded, her vision swam. She felt fragile, breakable. If someone on the street were to graze her, certainly she would shatter. She let Kurenai help her out of her seat, as Kiba slid a mark in between the pages she was currently reading. A diagram of chakra formation stared up at her.

As Kiba slid the tome closed and tucked it into her bag, bookmark in place, she felt Kurenai sidle up beside her, a comforting warmth at her side. She reached over and grazed her thumb over Hinata’s cheek, as maternal as ever, and asked, “Shall we walk you home?”

“Thank you,” Hinata said smoothly, “But I’ll be alright. I need to drop something off at Shikamaru-san’s place.”

Kurenai gave her a narrow look, as Kiba glared at her from over their teacher’s shoulder. She studied Hinata and undoubtedly found her determination, her strength of will unhampered by her own sleepless state. A moment later, her features softened. She slid away from Hinata’s side, giving her space, accepting her autonomy. Concern still laced the tightness of her lips, but she reached out to Kiba and shook her head when he made to reach for her. He growled, but simmered, and both told her to head straight home afterwards, and get some _sleep_.

She nodded, thanking them, genuinely grateful for their affectionate concern. She watched them leave as she reached down and slung her satchel over her head, pulling her hair out from under the strap. She lilted to the side with the movement, losing her balance, dizzy. She grasped the back of the chair and centered herself, breathing deeply through her nose, out her mouth. She waited for her vision to stop spinning, and slowly stood to her full height.

She waved to the librarian on her way out, and headed in the direction of Shikamaru’s home. She knew he wouldn’t be there, but she really did have to drop off some of her work for him to study at his soonest convenience. She deliberately took the streets less travelled, unwilling to expose herself to strangers in her current state. She didn’t want to be touched, didn’t want to be spoken to. She needed the quiet of the night—it was much, much later than she remembered it being. The last time she’d looked up from her studies, the sun had still been in the sky.

She made it to Shikamaru’s house without incident, tucking her work just out of sight on his front deck, by the door. She didn’t want to intrude, and she’d been leaving scrolls and tomes stuffed to bursting with her own notes there for weeks. He’d find them easily, and she was sure they wouldn’t be taken. They were dreadfully dry reads to those not in the know.

She turned in the direction of the compound, feet dragging. Pushing the front gate open should’ve been a mindless, easy task, but with her muscles aching and her mind unfocused, she found herself having to shoulder through. She made it to her room without incident, sliding her door shut silently. By this time, nearly every Hyuuga would already be sleeping. She wasn’t worried about encountering any of her family members. Her footsteps were silent enough not to stir even the air around her.

She slid into her room and not a moment later, she slipped out of her clothes, letting them all to the floor, uncharacteristically careless. She left them there and dragged a simple shirt from one of her drawers. It came to the tops of her knees, and had holes in the hem. The neckline was stretched out, slipping off her shoulder, but it was comfortable. She sighed, stretching her arms over her head until her spine popped. She let her hands fall back to her sides and turned, before something moved in the shadows just out of sight.

On any other night, maybe Hinata would’ve had more sleep. Maybe her reflexes would’ve been quicker, her awareness more focused, her defenses properly upheld. But this night she was weary, frustrated and fearful of a future without answers, and her defenses were down.

Someone moved within the shadows of her own room, eyes sharp and red and twisting, and Hinata felt herself fall back against her dresser with a single, delicate gasp. Her brain, overworked and underfed, offered her a name.

_Itachi_.

He stepped from the shadows and moonlight slowly moved over him, gradually revealing her mistake. Not Itachi, no—she didn’t know him.

But she knew these eyes, not red, not yet. The electricity in the air, as he moved ever closer to her.

_Sasuke_.

He tilted his head, and she wondered if she’d said his name aloud. But her lips were sealed, her breath coming quicker than she remembered. Startled and not entirely aware of the proper passage of time, her brain sluggish, she raised a hand to her chest. She blinked and as her eyes readjusted, she found him only a foot away, expression shifting.

Uchiha Sasuke was not an easy person to read. Usually. So it was curious, Hinata thought blearily, that she could so clearly see the concern in the sharpness of his eyes, flickering over her features, capturing her breath with how intense he was. She felt pinned under his gaze. He didn’t touch her, but she felt warm, as though he had. As though he was. Maybe it was the fire in him, which he kept bridled behind his ribs. Lungs full of flame; she remembered that, from when they were young.

“You’re trembling,” he said, at last, and Hinata almost laughed. She tore her eyes from the sharp line of his lips, lifted her hands in front of her. She nodded, expression shifting as if to say, _huh, you’re right_. She watched her hands shake in front of her.

Warmth, curling around her wrists. Fingers pressed gently over her pulses where before there were none. She glanced up and Sasuke didn’t waver as he gazed at her, his intensity stealing her breath away. He was so close, and so warm—she wasn’t as surprised as some part of her thought she should be. The general consensus was that someone as cold as Sasuke would have hands to match, right?

But they were warm. And gentle. And beautiful, in a way that made Hinata want to cry. Embarrassment curled through her, ever present and even emphasized in her exhausted state. She watched the way his fingers moved, sliding from her wrists to her hands, holding them in-between his own, until she could no longer feel them shaking. Instead, she felt the steadiness of him. The unflinching stillness. It made her think about her breathing, and she found herself calming, her breaths slowing, mirroring his calm.

Was she having an anxiety attack? She _had_ turned to find a stranger in the shadows of her own room, and thought him the mastermind behind the foreign chakra writhing somewhere unfelt beneath her skin. It made sense to feel some anxiety, even after realizing that her intruder was a friend, and not a foe.

Her eyes lifted from their joined hands to meet Sasuke’s eyes, and the moment they did, he breathed out her name. A simple exhalation; a greeting and a relief.

She stuttered over his name, startled by the tenderness of his tone, the disquiet still turning in his eyes.

“U-Uchiha-san,” she swallowed, and some of her wits returned to her. She flinched without meaning to, and he released her hands a moment later. She brought them to her chest, missing his warmth even as she felt heat in her cheeks. She was focused enough from the scare to realize that she was acting strange, and what a fool he must think her, to have snuck up on her so easily in her own home. When she’d intruded in his house, he’d surprised her with a blade at her throat—non-threatening but present all the same.

And yet here he stood, in her place, with the upper hand again—

Realization dawned on her and she sputtered, asking, “What are you doing here?” _In my room_!

Sasuke studied her expression, before one corner of his lips quirked.

“Your window was open.”

Hinata frowned. “No, it wasn’t.”

Sasuke shrugged, and then he began to glance around her room. Hinata noticed her clothes piled on the floor and wished suddenly that she would’ve just put them away like normal. Now she probably looked like a complete slob, and what else was he looking at? His eyes would see too much!

She licked her lips and Sasuke’s eyes jumped back to her with a single blink. Hinata gazed up at him and the night before her came flooding to the front of her mind, diagrams and transcriptions, potions and poisons, antidotes and chakra signatures and endless, endless study.

“I wanted to ask you questions,” she said suddenly, without even realizing it. She pushed herself off from the dresser, overestimating her own strength, and found herself squaring her feet to center her abruptly tilting vision. She barely lilted, but Sasuke reached out to steady her all the same. She had thought a single touch would shatter her, she was so unbearably tired. But his hands remained, and she stayed in one piece, and she felt comfortable there, in his arm’s reach.

“You’re barely standing, Hinata,” he offered, disapproving.

Hinata yawned, blinking furiously. She tried to frown. “I can ask you questions even if I’m sitting, Uchiha-san.”

Was that a trick of the light, or did she catch a genuine smile cross his lips?

“Of course,” he agreed quietly, and she was too tired to realize he was humoring her, openly amused even as that ever-present worry never completely left him. Had she been more astute of mind at the time, she would have noticed the way he didn’t take his eyes from her, making sure she didn’t fall. She would’ve seen the way he studied her face, the tightness of her shoulders, noting every part of her body that gave her exhaustion away.

Hinata tried to conjure one of the dozens of questions she had for him and found her temples pounding instead, until she reached up to them and allowed herself to lean back against her dresser. It dug into her tailbone, a faint irritation she ignored.

Still massaging her temples, Hinata sighed. “I have so, so many questions.”

This time, when Sasuke stepped closer, Hinata was aware of it. He didn’t hesitate or question himself, though she noticed something jagged like wonder cross his eyes—as if his movement surprised him as much as it did her.

“Tomorrow, you can ask your questions.” He promised, voice low. “Rest now, Hinata.”

“Why are you here?” She asked instead, curiosity getting the better of her. When she’d broken into his home to find him, it had been for good reason. He’d been avoiding her, and she’d had questions that she needed answers for. He had asked nothing of her, sought nothing more than the warmth of her skin, which was confusing enough as is.

“As I recall,” Sasuke intoned evenly, just this side of amused. “You broke into my home first.”

Hinata ignored completely the way her face heated, shamed but unwilling to shy away from his gleaming gaze. His lips were a straight line, but she sensed humor in his eyes.

“It was poor form,” she agreed, “But I had good reason. You were avoiding me. And I had questions.”

Sasuke cocked his head at her, and Hinata simply blinked up at him. It was impossible not to notice how beautiful he was, this close up with moonlight against his back. Hinata was glad for the moment that she was caught in his shadow, retched features muffled. Her heartbeat raced, pounding, and she couldn’t help but to feel surprised and uncertain of this situation all at once. It was bizarre that Uchiha Sasuke was here in her room, crowding her with his beauty and his physicality, without even bothering to explain himself.

A moment of silence passed between them. Sasuke blinked once, eyes heavy as he gazed down at her. Hinata’s breath nearly caught in her throat.

At last, he asked, “Do I need a reason?”

She stiffened, shocked, and watched as his hand rose towards her. She remained as still as prey caught in a hunter’s gaze as he ever so gently ran his fingers over her cheekbone, tucking some of her hair behind her cheek. His fingers remained against the hinge of her jaw for a moment longer, curled loosely around her ear, where he’d gently tucked her hair away.

“Rest,” he said again, so quietly.

Hinata blinked, and the warmth of him was all that remained. Her window was open, and her curtains billowed with the midnight breeze.

She stood frozen for a moment, wondering what the hell just happened, before moving shakily towards her bed.

She decided that at least for now, she’d take his advice.

She’d rest.

 

✧

 

The air vibrated around her, and her muscles quivered uselessly, freezing her in place. She tried to lift her hands to cover her ears, an instinctual reaction to the attack on her eardrums, so bent on breaking. It felt like an eternity of motion, both a cacophony of chaotic sound bearing down on her bones and a forced stillness within it, before it waded to a stop. The sky rumbled overhead, and water continued to pour down upon them.

She glanced up against the rainfall and saw Kiba, wolfed out and raging, tear through her attacker with a whirlwind of movement. Akamaru leapt overhead, landing on another Sound nin, tearing into his side. Behind her, she could hear the buzzing of insects, easily distinguishable from the buzzing of instruments, as dangerous as jutsu. She spun away from her attacker, now clutched under Kiba’s claws, and jumped into a leaping arc, legs swinging.

The top of her foot connected with the side of someone’s face, and she heard him grunt as he was propelled towards the dirt, face first. She landed behind him, graceful as a dancer even in the mud, and turned with hands already lifted. The lifted veins beside her eyes pulsed, and she called, “Kiba-kun, behind you!”

Her call had him turning without thinking, fully trusting her, and a barrage of shuriken cascaded past him, plunging into the lifeless chest of the Sound nin he’d just taken down. The same one who had held Hinata within a sphere of damaging noise, blaring from a giant metallic instrument. Hinata didn’t hesitate to make sure Kiba had escaped the barrage, she flipped closer to her assailant, who’d just lifted himself from the ground and now looked at her with the right side of his face beginning to swell. Her hands moved so quickly he didn’t stand a chance; chakra center by chakra center, she shut him down.

He fell to his knees before her, and she watched him fall the rest of the way to the ground. His body disappeared in a single musical note and a _poof_ , a common finding when they encountered Sound nin. Someone behind her choked, and she heard another body hit the ground. A following note, the sound of vanishing. She turned over her shoulder, bright eyes heavy, and watched the last of Shino’s creatures crawl back into his sleeves. They seemed angrier than usual; maybe it was the rain, impeding their flight. Shino turned to her with a nod, and Hinata sought out their third member, finding him with blood under his nails and a disgruntled snarl. He moved to Akamaru, huffing, and ran his fingers through his wet fur, uncaring of the spread of blood. It washed out the more he combed through.

“Tricky fuckers,” he snapped, untangling as he went. Akamaru’s tongue lolled.

“Kiba-kun,” Hinata straightened, breathing a sigh of relief now that the fighting was over. “Do you have it?”

“Eh?” Kiba snapped, before nodding his head. He reached into his jacket and gave them a peek of the scroll they’d confiscated, not letting the rain soak it through, though it now had slight blood splatter across it. “’Course I do.”

Shino came to stand next to Hinata, one of his hands resting on her shoulder for just a moment before returning to his side.

“Perhaps next time you should hold the scroll.” He suggested, and Hinata felt her lips quirking. Once, Shino had been the obvious choice. Then they’d returned home and their scroll had had tiny bite marks littered throughout; his creatures hungered.

“Perhaps,” she agreed, smiling fondly at Kiba as he continued to brush through Akamaru’s fur. The cold air played over her skin, a vivid reminder of them standing amid a viciously growing storm.

Shino watched Kiba for a moment, as though amused, before asking: “Shall we return home?”

After a moment of distraction, Kiba nodded in his direction. He patted Akamaru a few times before turning, making his way over to them and readying for the short trek back into the village hidden in the leaves. Hinata, however, shook her head and explained, “I’m going to stay back. I have an…errand, of sorts.”

Kiba raised an eyebrow. “In the forest?”

“Close,” Hinata hedged, not wanting to explain exactly where she was headed, or why. “I’ll be home soon.”

Her friends hesitated, protective and wary, but after a long moment of contemplating they looked at one another and then nodded, trusting.

“Okay,” Shino said quietly, already turning back. Kiba hesitated for one more turn, saying, “Don’t stay out in the cold for too long, yeah? You’ll catch something.”

Hinata’s smile was fond, and she offered them a definitive nod as her Byakugan faded. She watched them disappear into the trees before turning back and leaping up into the branches. She travelled for quite some time, careful of her footing on the wet-slicked branches, endeared by the sound of rain through the canopy.

She wasn’t entirely certain of the exact location, but she was going by the change in the foliage. This was made even more difficult a search, given the weather conditions, but she was determined. She looked up and recognized the mountain face to her left; she remembered the mission that started this whole mess, the cave in the mountainside and the path she forced herself to take even while feeling death creep up on her. She edged in a similar direction, trying in vain to hear the distant sound of the eastern falls. It was nearly impossible to hear over the rain and the thunderous booms, but by some luck the flashes of lightning overhead partially lit the area around her, and Hinata’s eyes caught a flash of red on her periphery.

Excitedly, she gasped, “Toyon plants!”

She descended quickly, leaping from branch to branch until her boots sunk partially into the mud. She knelt next to the plant that had caught her eye, reached out and touched the edge of a prominent stock of bright red berries. She glanced over it and smiled, knowing that she was close.

It didn’t take her much longer from there to reach her intended destination, as the foliage gradually transitioned from forest-based to that which edged a stream, flowing choppily ahead of her. She saw the beginnings of cordgrass on either side of the stream and moved through it, allowing the piercing cold of the water to wash the mud off her boots and knees. She leapt up and began to move more slowly through the cordgrass, wading through it with her hands grazing the tops of the grass as she went. She left the stream behind.

Soon after, she finally reached it. Looking up, she caught sight of a roof, pelted with rain, and through the darkened mist the rain conjured around her, she could vaguely make out the frame of the safehouse Sasuke had brought her to not so long ago.

She walked up to the house and ran her hand over one of the front pillars, the wood smooth under her calluses. She remembered this place in a way that was dream-like, in fuzzy patches of memory. She turned from it, not here to explore inside—somehow, that felt like another intrusion.

Instead, she turned back to the foliage around the perimeter and knelt in the cordgrass, digging into the roots. She pulled her satchel from her hip and set it at her side, collecting herbs from the earth for further study. She doubted that these plants in particular were the source of her poison and antidote, but if she was going to understand something she wasn’t allowed to actually study, then she’d study the next best thing. Something similar. Same sort of idea, different ingredients.

She continued to make her way through the vegetation, the rain beating down on her back, soaking her to the bone. She didn’t mind it, even caught herself fondly looking up at times to try to catch the stripes of lightning in the air. It was thrilling, raising the hairs on her skin. She could practically feel the electricity in the air, and it reminded her of—

She had to focus. She kept finding her thoughts trailing away, to the house at her back, the familiarity of electricity in the air. A pair of dangerous eyes, gazing at her, unflinching and assured. Her heart raced, and she silently denied her feelings. It was a simple _interest_ , she thought, trying to convince herself. Uchiha Sasuke was a man of many questions and so few answers, shrouded in constant mystery. It wasn’t strange for her to wonder, curious as a cat.

She thought of their childhood, when all she could ever think about was Naruto; when every eye turned to Sasuke, the prodigy of their generation, the last surviving Uchiha, she turned to the orphaned pariah who smiled in the face of adversity and _kept on_. Naruto had been beautiful to her, in every way, so much so that there had never been room in her heart for anyone else. Not until her later teenage years, when she gave her life for him in the fight against Pain. Not until he came to her bedside, held her hand in the strength of his own, head bowed and tears streaming down his cheeks, telling her that he was sorry.

It was not easy, recovering from something like that. Her heart had never beat for anyone else, not once, not ever. Her eyes had never strayed. When she thought of hope, she had pictured Naruto’s hands, those beautiful, square hands. Battered and bruised. Always reaching out. When she thought of strength, she had pictured his shoulders, heavy and wide. Bearing the weight of the world, and asking for more just to lessen the burden for others. For years, Hinata had made Naruto her everything. And it had been easy.

It was not easy, losing everything but keeping it close. Friends, always, and no more. He was _sorry_. Her body had been broken, bandaged and still bleeding. In that moment, it was but a faint discomfort, compared to the pain of her heart shattering, in waves. In waves. Each word, lapping at her strength.

It was not easy.

It had been years, since then. She had trained herself out of loving him. An active endeavor. She found hope in the youth she protected and saw growing around her, in Kurenai’s arms, in the Academy’s halls. She found strength in her friendships, the unquestioning protectiveness that her generation had for one another. She learned to love herself, too.

And yet, in all those years after, she had never looked at anyone else. She had come to terms with her heart saying, _if not him, then no one else_. There was no drama to it, just simple truth. It hadn’t seemed so lonely a thing, until Tenten edged it out of her one night with just the two of them talking, and tears had formed in her eyes.

Some had asked her, but none had held her. Her heart just wouldn’t agree. She was in constant battle, wanting to move on, thinking that she _had_ moved on, only to find herself lacking before suitors. Some of them were just not right for her. Some could have been. But she looked at them and she thought of square hands, sometimes. Of impossible weights, on impossible shoulders. She couldn’t do that to anyone.

When had she stopped thinking about those hands, those shoulders? Those eyes, the deepest blue? The rain pelted against the nape of her neck and she pictured eyes edged like blades, darker than midnight, unflinching and confident. She felt the warmth of his hands against her skin, trailing over her cheekbone, and her breath shook out of her.

Hinata’s eyes snapped open and she wondered when she’d started daydreaming about electricity in the air, and the way it made her shiver. She tried to think of something else, anything else, but even over the thunder above and the thundering of her heart below, her mind only conjured this: Sasuke’s voice, wrapped around her name.

She dug deeper into the earth, shaking herself out of it. She lifted herself to her feet and moved to a different spot, casting a frustrated, if slightly bizarre glance up at the lightning that flashed through the sky. Her body shivered, and she blamed it on the cold. She moved closer to the tree line, fingers digging through the soil, back hunched with her work. She gathered some of the berries of a nearby Toyon plant, wrapped them in her satchel, collected some of the leaves, too. She forced herself not to think about Uchiha Sasuke and his liquid voice, the lethality of his direct stares. She tried to think about the properties of the materials in her hands, and how someone could break them down and infuse chakra into them and make it last.

But thinking about that made her think about Itachi, and then she was right back to thinking about Sasuke, by proxy. How was he dealing with all of this? Every turn in this case had Itachi involved, Hinata realized. And that…that must be painful. To have the person you hate most in the world, whom you vowed to kill at first sight, constantly brought up in conversation. Hinata thought of the questions she still had for him, and realized so many of them were about Itachi. Understanding him, recognizing in his thought processes how he might plan to use this antidote.

Hinata’s fingers slowed, her shoulders still hunched. Her hair, wet and heavy down her back, stuck to the sides of her face as she studied the pallor of her hands against the stark browns of the earth before her. He must be hurting, she thought with a sudden ache. Not in a way that anyone would see, but in a way that only someone as attentive as she could undoubtedly empathize. Her heart ached for him, a common occurrence, and she found herself sitting back on her folded legs. She glanced over her shoulder at the safe house, and again, those words made Hinata pause.

Did Sasuke believe in something like that? Did he think a safehouse could actually exist in a world that had proved the exact opposite of that fact? It wasn’t a lie, nor was it a truth she was ashamed to feel, but she wanted him to know safety. She knew that he had done awful, terrible things in his quest for power and vengeance. She didn’t deny that. But everyone was broken in different ways, and those like Sasuke, who were trying to make it right, well. They deserved a little mercy, didn’t they? A comforting presence. Someone willing to support them.

Hinata wasn’t arrogant enough to think that she could be that for Sasuke, or that he would even want her to be. _But it’s nice to think about_ , she thought loftily, looking up with eyes closed into the stream of rain. She let it wash over her face, catch in her eyelashes, and wondered how Sasuke perceived her.

Did he think of her as anything other than an acquaintance? Another Konoha shinobi? Did he think nothing more of her than the simple outlier that she was in this grand scheme of his brother’s own making? Or was that it, she wondered, sadness sapping at the edges of her. She remembered him moving through her room, not explaining himself, just…there. She wondered about that.

Thunder clapped overhead, but Hinata didn’t flinch. She absorbed the power of the weather, felt the vibration of sound move over her, and she wasn’t afraid. This was natural sound, not a shinobi striking out at her.

If shinobi could maneuver chakra into sound, then why was it surprising that they could maneuver it into a material substance? Elemental chakra existed and could be manipulated to grand schemes if mastered. Hinata’s eyes opened, sharper than before, determined. 

If Itachi was truly the master of Genjutsu that he was revered to be, then it would be all too easy for him to infuse—  
  
“What element does Itachi control?” Hinata asked herself, her heart racing anew. She sat up straighter, the herbs and the mud at her knees forgotten. Everyone, Sasuke included, said that Itachi was a genius. The strongest shinobi alive. Hinata felt fear zap through her, and wondered how many elements the elder Uchiha had at his command. With enough study and the dexterity to manipulate them, he could easily, _easily_ infuse chakra into earth or water-based jutsu. He could create a dormant, long-lasting Genjutsu confined within the herbs needed to make a poison, and if his control was as legendary as Hatake Kakashi promised it was, then he could—

It would be _simple_.

Hinata brought her hand up to her throat, feeling her pulse against her fingertips. She trembled, fear striking her, her mind racing over the added possibilities. What was _inside_ her? What had Sasuke given her? How long would it last, and what was its true purpose? Why had Itachi gone through the trouble of creating an attack veiled as an antidote, only to give it away freely, and to _Sasuke_ of all people?

Hinata swore, quietly and under her breath, the word stolen from her ears by the harshness of her surroundings. For every one item of information she learned about an Uchiha, three more questions popped up in its stead. So damn _frustrating_ , she thought bitterly, hunching.

She needed to find Sasuke. She needed to ask him questions, even the hard ones. Especially the hard ones. She turned once more to look through the mist at the safe house at her back, and wondered if somehow he had evaded her senses, and he was in there. Alone, but resting.

She knew that he wasn’t. And she also knew that she wouldn’t be resting tonight, either.

She knew where she needed to go. Where she needed to be. What she needed to ask.

_Who_ she needed to ask.

So she packed her things, rubbed the mud from her hands on her pants, and corded her hair in a long, wet tail down her back. She lifted her chin.

And she went to him.


End file.
